Asperger syndrome

Anybody else heard of this?

 

A guy on Boston Legal had it......

 

yeah, it's sort of an "autism light". i think the topic has come up here before.

 

Well, my whole friggin family thinks my dad has it. If true, it's sad it's taken this long to figure it out. He started taking an antidepressant acts totally different now, in a good way. I have to admit the signs are there, particularly his interest in one or two particular things.

 

aspberger's syndrome is really sort of one of those "hey, these people all sorta of seem similar to me -- it must be related" kind of things. people used to just be weird or eccentric, now they've got syndromes.

part of the deal with aspbergers is a difficulty with non-verbal communication, if i recall. like people who can't read body language and social circumstances very well and put everything on literal words.

 

I can see that. My dad will talk your ear off about the weather or music but anything else and he just goes silent. I just thought he was extremely introverted but this asperger thing seems to explain much of his behavior.

 

but keep in mind aspberger doesn't really explain it, it just names it and says there are other folks that exhibit the same sorts of things. i'm introverted and some topics i like to discuss. i tend to be very literal and sometimes i have a hard time figuring out when people are being sarcastic. a touch of aspberger's or just quirky?

i think a lot of these syndromes are people looking for a reason things are the way they are -- either to medicate it or to make an excuse for it. restless leg syndrome is the current winner for wacky. go back a few years and you've got chronic fatigue syndrome which was all the rage. add, adhd, ocb, depression, social anxiety disorder, etc. the assumtion is that everybody should be the same and if you're not, it's a problem that needs to be fixed.

my mom has a tendency to start a story about something, then go off on tangents and parentheticals that have little to do with the basic story she's relaying. so much so that the whole point she was going to make is forgotten. i'm sure it's something lots of people do so i suppose it's some sort of "syndrome". but that's just the way she is, so whatever.

 

assburgersuckgounc

 

I'm only slightly familiar with Asperger's. What information I've picked up has come through the resources I've sought on autism, because my grandson is autistic. These 2 sites should have a lot of the info you're interested in:

http://www.aspergers.com/

http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/asperger/asperger.htm

Asperger's is a form of autism--a neurological, developmental disorder. The symptoms can range from relatively mild to extremely severe. What distinguishes Asperger's from other forms of autism, I believe, is that those with that form of autism don't lose their facility for language.

I know from my experience with my grandson & my research that autistic people perceive & process information from their senses VERY differently than "normal" people do. They may be hyper-sensitive to some things, & under-sensitive to others. For example, I know of one boy who, at 14, was still unable to speak, but who had learned to communicate by pointing at letters on a board. When asked why he flaps his arms (such repetitive behaviors are common in autistic people), he explained that he did it to "feel where I am." He wasn't able to sense his body's orientation in space without moving.

There is no medication for autism, although there may be co-existing conditions that can be treated medically. The treatments are behavioral, educational therapies.

In this particular case, I strongly disagree.

No, they can't "explain" what the cause is, but they're working on it. And they're doing a little more than pointing at certain behaviors & classifying people. There are therapies that help both children & adults function in a world that operates very differently than they do. My grandson will probably have a mostly normal life. We have high hopes that he'll actually be able to live independently, or mostly so. If this had been me in the 60s instead of him in the new millenium, I'd probably have been institutionalized for life--or maybe beaten to death for not potty training on time.

I would have to agree that a lot of things are grossly over-diagnosed, & that far too many people jump to the "fix it with a drug" solution right off. But that doesn't mean that real people don't have real, debilitating problems that can be helped, with or without medication.

 

I have tended to think the same way, but this has me questioning that. My dad can tell you virtually everything regarding music history and past weather records, etc. but try and talk to him about something else and it's like talking to a brick wall. Now, with this medicine he's on, he won't shut up and is talking about everything. Maybe it's just the medicine or maybe he's just quirky, but whatever it is, I like the new dad.