It's Everyone Else!

Hi Annea My 14 year old daughter was diagnosed with HFASD fairly recently. I think it is true to say that girls generally mask the signs of ASD/AS more than boys and appear outwardly to be "coping" especially if they are high functioning and managing to maintain some sort of achievement at school. Sadly she has developed a severe anxiety reaction in the form of psychosis and depression. When our daughter was little, we suspected autism and asked our GP and HV but were assured that there was nothing wrong - just a bit of eccentricity! We now feel incredibly guilty that she has been struggling for 14 years because we allowed ourselves to be brushed off. Some sort of test would have been really useful and I can't help but feel that our daughter might not have had such an extreme anxiety reaction if we'd realised the extent of what she was going through. We've always supported her as best we can as we have always known she was "different" but a diagnosis would have enabled us to educate her school teachers and maybe lessen the load a bit. It sounds as though you are very supportive Annea. Keep a close eye on your daughter and really stand your ground with the school if she becomes any more anxious. They have a duty to take care of her mental wellbeing while she is there although I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that you might have to be a bit pushy to make them listen.

Sounds like you're really going through it at the moment Lya. Our daughter (14) has rages too and the opposite where she's as high as a kite and quite out of control. We were told this is most probably due to her ASD but not to rule out the beginnings of bi-polar. She developed an acute stress reaction because of the way she was feeling all the time and is now on medication called risperidone which (amongst other things) is used to treat mood swings in ASD and her rages have really settled down. Trouble is though, there are some quite hefty side effects and she seems to have lost her sparkle now so I'm not sure how I feel about the medication. It's lovely not having the incredible rages and mood swings, but I'm not sure we've found quite the right level of medication yet as it's still early days. It's really difficult to know what to do for the best isn't it? I just feel really sad about the whole thing at the moment so you have my absolute sympathy Lya. Are you getting any support from anywhere? xxxxx