Published on 12, July, 2020
Hello folks!
My brother is 41 and has just been diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome. Since the age of 3 he has had behavioural problems. This has taken its toll on my Dad, Mum and me his sister. I had a nervous breakdown 20 years ago due to his behaviour and still bear the scars. On June 4th of this year my beloved father, a retired doctor, hurriedly packed a few suitcases and fled, with my Mum and our Labrador, to Scotland from England. I was with my fiancé in Glasgow when I got a desperate call from my father to say that they were at a motorway service station, fleeing for their lives from my brother. They took refuge with us. We provided a "safe house" for my dear parents. My Dad feared that my "aspie" brother would pour petrol through the letter box and they would be burned alive in their beds. He spoke to us about how best he and my Mum could protect themselves.
There is an army of psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, RMNs, support workers and the list goes on ad infinitum of people who are devoted to caring for people like my brother. Who is looking out for us? Are we not the real victims of Aspergers? The police will only step in if we are assaulted. So we wait in our homes...to be attacked...murdered...annihilated...we don't know what awaits us but we wait.
i would be very interested to hear what this community thinks about our predicament. How do those with Aspergers feel when they read of our heartbreak? How do the professionals feel? What advice can they give us?
A final question...if there are any security experts reading this can they give us any tips on how to keep ourselves safe. I know I will never feel safe in this world while my brother is alive.
Kindest regards,
Anguished Sibling.
Intenseworld has pre-empted most of what I would have said here. If diagnosed with aspergers at 41, what on earth were they treating him for before?
If he has been treated for years as paranoid schizophrenic, and wrongly medicated it is easy to understand he will not be well balanced. Some people can develop schizophrenia from unresolved autism issues, as a secondary outcome, as there seems to be a predisposition for this. But other people have been misdiagnosed schizophrenic because the specialists still don't sufficiently understand autism, and there was an assumption of "early onset" schizophrenia (supposed normally to be an adult phenomenon) in children who actually had autism.
There's a story in the literature on autism spectrum about a child who, when asked if he heard voices, said yes. So they took the schizophrenia line. But people on the autistic spectrum are very literal, due to not being able to pick up inference in speech. Yes he heard voices - because he was not deaf. He didn't hear voices that were only in his head. The speciaist should have given him the question in full.
Alcoholism and drug abuse can also be consequences, and people can get very paranoid about how people behave towards them and perceive them because the communication difficulties make it hard to get a balanced perspective on what neurotypicals would quickly resolve.
But as others here have said, its not a predisposition to violence. Meltdowns are responses to communication impasse and sensory overload, and express real distress that the individual is experiencing for very real reasons. Some people on the spectrum may very naiively do inappropriate things, due to lack of social feedback enabling them to identify boundaries, but again not usually violently. Those that get into trouble with the law generally do so because their vulnerabuility has been taken advantage of by others.
You say you don't want to elaborate on the other issues. I do think though you have to address these. While Asperger's may lately have been provided as explanation, it is likely that the harm done to him, and by him to others, is consequential of the effect of autism on his personality, leading to mental health problems.
While autism may have been a trigger factor it may not actually resolve what has happened to him over 41 years.