im interested to know what, if any, personality disorder(s) are similar to autism and or co-morbid?
im interested to know what, if any, personality disorder(s) are similar to autism and or co-morbid?
Yes, and sometimes they do do that. Depends how well informed your GP is. It might help to take an advocate with you. Or indeed write to your GP before the appointment outlining all the reasons why you think an assessment is necessary. It might help in case you don't get it all out while you are there.
im actually seeing one of the managers at a local chatity who help people understand their Autism more / better, ( i voluunteer there once a week) we're going to write down some talking points and what i dont want to happen is for my GP to "blame" my Autism, because i know its not that.
Your GP I guess. You really need someone with expertise in Autism, EUPD and trauma so they can tease apart what might be what and give you a sense that you have your truth, whatever that might be. Symptoms of what looks like EUPD could also be a trauma response, something that's actually just a feature of Autism or EUPD.
If when they've done that and you've taken time to reflect, if anything isn't sitting right say so. Psychological and neuro diagnoses aren't like a broken leg where the evidence is entirely objective. I'd also ask your assessor what expertise they have in all these areas.
The other thing I'd advise is that even if they do diagnose a PD and recommend - probably DBT therapy, is that you insist that your therapist is properly Autism informed in order for you to be able to get the most benefit from it and don't be afraid to ask for the reasonable adjustments you need.
wow, thanks for your really detailed reply, a lot to take in!. i know that i definelty "meet" the criteria for a possible BPD/EUPD diagnosis, but whats the best way for me to see someone about a possible BPD/EUPD diagnosis? will i have to go through my GP/Doctor?. i've some further research on the possibly of "having" BPD and Autism at the same time, and its certainly possbile. a study says that 4% of Autistic people meet the critera of a BPD diagnosis, but as you say the majority of people having BPD are female, whereas, men are less likely to be diagnosed with BPD and maybe diagnosed with something else
Hmmmmm....if you google that one you will find story after story and increasingly very good research pieces on the misdiagnosis of Autism as a personality disorder, typically BPD or EUPD. Women and people assigned female at birth tend to be the main victims. Women have died as a consequence of that misdiagnosis. It is also the most commonly rescinded diagnosis following an Autism diagnosis in women, albeit many have to fight long and hard to get that unflagged from their records.
Basically, some of the surface features of Autism can look like BPD if all you take is a cursory glance. There may be relationship difficulties or a confused sense of self and melt down can look like BPD displaced anger. There is a massive difference between the two in terms of the causes of the behaviours seen on the surface and indeed the motivations of the individual. BPD relationship difficulties and any outbursts are generally to do with attachment issues, Autistic ones to do with lack of social understanding and melt down caused by sudden change or sensory issues etc. IT's like the difference between a kiddie tantrum in a supermarket because they can't have any sweets and a kiddie melt down because the sensory and social environment is just too overwhelming. One is a behaviour you can learn to take responsibility for and learn not to have, the other can't be prevented except by altering the environment and the individual shouldn't be made to feel bad about it.
BPD and EUPD are highly stigmatised and tales abound out there of general and mental health services not treating people with that diagnosis very well because they assume that they are all lying manipulators who just want attention and to split their teams. That can be jolly harmful I should think for BPD patients, never mind those misdiagnosed with the condition and who are actually Autistic. It can be very damaging to be treated for a condition you don't actually have and then blamed for not getting better. Some people have been given medications which have proved dangerous for them unnecessarily.
There is much debate out there as to whether the BPD/EUPD diagnosis ought to be scraped - many folk are in fact just badly traumatised, even if they aren't Autistic. They certainly don't deserve to be stigmatised like that. Neither does anyone who may genuinely have a PD and wants to address it. There is much debate also as to how many Autistic people do have a PD alongside Autism. It's difficult to be confident about any of the stats you read when so many people receive a probable misdiagnosis of EUPD in very brief appointments with psychiatrists who don't actually know anything about neurodivergence, before they later fight to get to the door of, never mind through a lengthy and rigorous Autism assessment, only to find that MH don't want to re-examine the possibility they could have been wrong in the first place.
And Yup! I've been through that one. It took one shrink 5 minutes to slap EUPD on my file (and they kept that hidden from me - no wonder any therapy thereafter was just confusing and frustrating me more) on the basis of one melt down and £5K and a Hell of a lot of detective and research work and stress on my part to get to the the truth that I am Autistic and seek private counselling to get over the trauma done by MH and then, when I found out about the misdiagnosis, to find the right professionals to prove to them I never had a PD in the first place. My story is NOT special. It happens again and again and again. There are many more such stories on this forum. And it is dangerous.
Now, that's not to say that PDs don't exist or that it is impossible to have a PD in tandem with Autism, who am I to know? But I am a big believer that no one can improve their situation and all therapy will ultimately be useless without the right diagnosis in the first instance. This is why I would like to see any shrink who hands out PD diagnoses to be equally expert in Autism and be pro-actively asking from the outset is the patient's experiences better explained by one or the other or both. And they can't do that without very intensive assessment of the individual - which rarely seems to happen. I also think that anyone who receives a later Autism diagnosis ought to automatically have all previous diagnoses carefully and open mindedly re-assessed to see whether they are still relevant or whether they could be misdiagnoses because the Autism was unidentified.
In answer to your question BPD, now called EUPD is the one on the surface similar, but underneath isn't anything like.
im interested to know what, if any, personality disorder(s) are similar to autism and or co-morbid?
On a pooled basis, a recent study of studies found that 12.6% of autistic people had a comorbid personality disorder (PD), with conditions in PD clusters A and C co-occurring most commonly:
im interested to know what, if any, personality disorder(s) are similar to autism and or co-morbid?
There is a nice chart that covers co-morbid conditions here:
https://www.autismspeaks.org/expert-opinion/social-pragmatic-communication-disorder
I'm not sure what the personality disorders are that you refer to but hopefully they are on the list.
Can’t really help with that. But I’ve come to realise that bipolar personality disorder is often diagnosed in undiagnosed autistic women, although in most of these cases (I’ve heard of) this turns out to be a misdiagnosis rather than a co-morbidity.
