How Autism can be misdiagnosed and go undetected in adults

Experts ponder link between creativity and mood disorders

By Elizabeth Landau CNN


(CNN) -- The works of David Foster Wallace, who committed suicide September 12, 2008, are famous for their obsessively observed detail and emotional nuance.

David Foster Wallace reportedly battled depression for 20 years.

My note: He did not battle depression, but the side-effects of living as an autistic (most probably with Asperger's) in a non-autistic society. The visible depression signs was one of the side-effects that all autistics deal with throughout their lives! It is ignorance that killed this adult with Autism not his depression!!!
Unfortunately, before Autism became as known as it is today, and the mood ups and downs connected with autism became more known, many autistics were misdiagnosed with a range of conditions including bipolar disorder, chronic depression, eating disorders, etc. If the dots were correctly connected, the larger image that would appear would have been Autism. Unfortunately, most who treat people with mood or mental disorders, do not dig that deep. They just see whatever is most prominent in a patient's condition and label him that!

Certain characteristics of his prose -- hypersensitivity and constant rumination, or persistent contemplation -- reflect a pattern of temperament that some psychology researchers say connects mental illness, especially bipolar disorder and depression, with creativity.
There have been more than 20 studies that suggest an increased rate of bipolar and depressive illnesses in highly creative people, says Kay Redfield Jamison, professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University and author of the "An Unquiet Mind," a memoir of living with bipolar disorder.

My note: Bipolar and depression are two very obvious tell-tales of an adult undiagnosed autistic!!! It is the ignorance of scientists like this psychiatry professor that killed David Wallace Foster. Autism includes a high ability that is linked with creativity, and the hypersensitivity that artists have. Look at the list of symptoms of bipolar and compare them to those of Autism. See what I mean???

Experts say mental illness does not necessarily cause creativity, nor does creativity necessarily contribute to mental illness, but a certain ruminating personality type may contribute to both mental health issues and art.

"Unquestionably, I think a major link is to the underlying temperaments of both bipolar illness and depression, of reflectiveness and so forth," Jamison said. This theory could help explain why eminent artists throughout the history, from composer Robert Schumann to poet Sylvia Plath to Wallace -- suffered mood disorders.My note: All of these "mood disorders" are nothing more and nothing less than Autistic frustrations that surface as depression, when things do not go as we know they should, and extreme joy and emotional "high" when things go as we know they should.

"It's pretty clear if you read [Wallace's] books that he was a very obsessive, kind of ruminating guy," said Paul Verhaeghen, associate professor of psychology at Georgia Institute of Technology.
"You can see it in his sentences. ... They're breathless and they need to be annotated, and the annotations need to be annotated again."

My note: "Helloooo! He was autistic!!! Take a look at how Autism is connected with speech and the use of speech."

The research of Verhaeghen and colleagues shows when people are in a reflective mode, they may become more creative, depressed, or both. Previous research shows that when people are in a ruminating mode, they are more likely to be depressed, he said.
"If you think about stuff in your life and you start thinking about it again, and again, and again, and you kind of spiral away in this continuous rumination about what's happening to you and to the world -- people who do that are at risk for depression ," he said.

Verhaeghen, who is also a novelist and describes himself as a "somewhat mood disordered person," had a particular interest in the connection between creativity and this ruminating state of mind.
"One of the things I do is think about something over and over and over again, and that's when I start writing," he said.

Sensitivity to one's surroundings is also associated with both creativity and depression, according to some experts.
Creative people in the arts must develop a deep sensitivity to their surroundings -- colors, sounds, and emotions, says Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, professor of psychology and management at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California. Such hypersensitivity can lead people to worry about things that other people don't worry about as much, he said, and can lead to depression.

My note: Wrong again you fools! They are autistic, and that is why they are hypersensitive and that is why they express this hypersensitivity into art. You got the whole chain reaction upside down you fools!!!

"The arts are more dangerous [than other professions] because they require sensitivity to a large extent," he said. "If you go too far you can pay a price -- you can be too sensitive to live in this world."
Terence Ketter is professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at Stanford University.

Ketter and his colleagues compared a healthy control group with bipolar patients, depression patients, and a control group of graduate students in writing and the arts.
They found that people with bipolar disorder scored better -- up to about 50 percent higher -- on creativity tests than the healthy control group. The creative control group had about the same increase in score relative to the healthy control group.
But more research is needed, says Ketter. The study does not explain the connection or show a causal relationship, he said.

Some have pointed out that being engaged in creative pursuits makes a person more open to experience, while others say the pressure of being engaged in the arts causes negative emotion, according to Ketter.
Still, the temperamental characteristics in question are thought to be somewhat inherent.
"It's a little hard to argue that engaging in creative activity could create the temperament, and it may be a little bit more possible that this temperament gives you a creative advantage," he said.

Verhaeghen's theory that rumination contributes to negative emotions generally sounds plausible and in some ways consistent with his own views, said Ketter.
Many hope that this type of research will be helpful in developing better strategies to manage and detect mental illness. These strategies can sometimes mean the difference between life and death.
"Tragically, mood disorders can still present a sudden death in people who have been undiagnosed and untreated, and die from the illness," says Ketter.

My note: YES!!! Undiagnosed and untreated for Autism because that is what they have! They were high functioning so they were never noticed. And as children no one knew what autism was back then. Wake up fools. People are dying!!!

More specifically, Ketter says, just as heart disease sometimes presents itself for the first time as a fatal heart attack, mental illness sometimes presents itself for the first time as a suicide.

An appreciation of David Foster Wallace

AUTISM and SOCIETY - Who is truly ill?

You see if we have two things, and one of them (Society in this case) decided to label the other (Autism) a disorder (a developmental disorder in this case), we need to question how sound is that decission, and what interests are being served by that label!

My personal belief is that what motivates Society and Science that pulls Society's strings is greed more than anything else. Science has become our Society's new religion, since we have now put all our faith towards preventing death (the one thing that holds our ultimate fear) in Science's hands, where previourly these were God's hands.

And like the good ol' "Church", Science is the one that now controls Society. Maybe it is about time we change that "In God we Trust", into "In Science we Trust" as this would far better apply to today's beliefs.

We have allowed Science to take over, simply because we refuse to accept our own weaknesses and vulnerabilities, we refuse to see the inevitable truth that we will all, no matter what, one day die! We wish to avoid this truth, we wish to pay any amount to change this truth, we are willing to make any sacrifice to avert this from happening. We used to pray to God, offer things of value, offer sacrificies such as the lives of others, whether humans or animals, to ensure we would be kept well, and of course... ALIVE!

Yet, this endless game with death came to be a very profitable industry. The promise of eternal youth, of eternal health, of eternal life has become the core of today's Society, where the cosmetics industry, the pharmaceutical industry and whole mecical world have become our new Gods!

To them we sactrifice our income, to them we sacrifice animals (we call them laboratory animals), to them we also sacrifice humans. Ourselves, and our children. Truly, nothing has really changed much since the dark Middle Ages. It has only become more hip, more acceptable, more easily accessed, more integraded into our daily lives. We think about taking medications or not, as little as we think about using toilet paper or not.

We fill our bodies with chemicals that are absorbed either through our digestive system or through our skin, hair, nails, lips, you name it. We never even think what substances are inside our shampoo bottles, are nail polish, our lipstick, our deodorants. Yet, we worry that some mercury inside a vaccine, might cause Autism!

This is how blind we have become to what is happening to us and around us. How we are being "drugged" through small amounts of different chemicals day after day... We then wonder how our Human kind is changing, giving birth to Autistic children.

Mass media has a big saying into this, too. They can also gain profit from this huge money-making industry by reporting new findings, by creating sensationalism out of nothing, by making us accept easier and easier the dark practices that happen around us, by making us immune to them through over reporting, though commercialism, through osmosis. At the end we neither see or hear any more what is happening and how we are being used, abused, misled, drugged, poisoned and yes... killed.

I will not sit here and repeat things others have said better than I ever could. I will just add here the links to articles that explain, support and analyze the fact that Science has turned us all into laboratory animals, abusing our ultimate fear of death and desease, and has allowed medical doctors, psychiatrists, etc. to exploit us like never before.

Ultimately, it is Society that has gone ill, that has become a disorder, a viral infection that is slowly killing our Human kind. It is Society that is creating more illnesses than it can cure, so that we remain eternaly dependant on their practices while it feeds on us.

Read on, there is plenty to take into account the next time you read about Autism and how it is the worst developmental disorder, a true epidemic, a danger to Society and social rules. Think deep what ends serve this Society and the social rules.

Who are behind this "Society" and who make these social rules. Then wonder whether Autism is not yet another scapegoat, another diversion from what truly is the point here: How dependant have we become to the endless dream of a magic pill that cures all illness, including death!

- How Pharma Giants Are Getting Rich By Calling Our Life Problems 'Medical Disorders'

- Mental Illness or Social Sickness?

- ADD/ADHD: Mental Illness or Social Oppression?

I rest my case.

Some Basic Stuff as a Warm Up

To begin explaining some things about Autism, I need to first 'review' some basic stuff, like for example the difference between the male and the female brain. This is necessary, because Autism has been referred to as the 'extreme male brain' by Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen, because of the way that the autistic mind functions.

Yet, one needs to realize that there are males and females who have autism, and thus it is of great importance to understand how the autistic extreme male brain will interact with the brain of a male and the brain of a female.

The female brain is wired in a different way, it is wired for empathy and this means that the extreme male brain's tendency of the autistic way of thinking will be put into a different kind of use than with male Auties and Aspies. Males in general because of their male brain wiring are more concerned with their own personal advancement, their own career, their own greatness, their own kingdom on earth.

Women on the other hand are more concerned with helping others, teaching others, networking with others, not for personal gratification but for feeling that they have managed to bring forth (give birth to) a better life, a better world, not for the world but for the people. Women want to help people in particular, while men want to help the world in general.

This difference is based on our genetic gender goals: a female seeks a safe nest, a safe place to give birth and bring up her young, this will compel her to create this safe place by making sure that the people around her are foe and not enemies. That is why women are more interested in socializing, networking, creating a group of allies around them that will help them protect her young. After all humans are part predators (meat eaters) but also part prey (we can be eaten by other predatory meat eaters).

Like the female animals of a herd that become sexually available and give birth at the same time to ensure that safety is in numbers is present when the young are born, the same way human females 'network' to create a timing, a perceived safety, for their young. It is common knowledge that if several women live in close proximity with each other, in the same household, their menstrual cycle will eventually become the same. They will become like the female animals of a herb that time their pregnancies and birthing so that it corresponds with the rest of the females in the herd.

This is what empathy is, it the instinct of the herd as a group that cooperates together, it is the HERDING instinct that promotes safety and eventually the survival of the species. Males on the other hand are more concerned of their own personal image, they have to prove to the female that they are worth mating with her and allowing the next generation to carry his genes. Males do whatever they do as a show-off of their ability and talents so they will attract the female's attention. They also have to fight off other males, by for example butting heads with each other like rams do, by proving their superiority to them, and showing that they deserve more than the other male(s) the prize of procreation.

Likewise a male with High Functioning Autism (HFA) or Asperger's Syndrome (AS), is doing whatever he is doing as a proof of their own self-worth, as a proof that they are better than another male (or more intelligent for example), and that they are someone worth mating with. If you look carefully you will see that it is mostly men (with HFA or AS or not) that have gotten Nobel prizes, and NOT that many women. Not because women are less capable, or because their work is less groundbreaking. It is because women are more concerned to benefiting others in an individual basis, than with promoting their self-worth through generalized impersonal non-individualized work.

Men are out for the prize: the honor to allow their genes to exist in future generations. Whether men are aware of that or not it is not important, it is still the underlining motivation to anything and everything they do. With HFA/AS men, because of their extreme male brain coupled with the male wiring of their brain, this need is even more extreme and so are the disappointments if this end is not achieved.

This means that a HFA/AS male that has not been given the opportunity to fulfill that need will reject society all together, will reject the competitiveness, feeling he can't compete with other males and that will he will never find a female (love shyness). A HFA/ASfemale feels more the effects of loneliness as an isolation. It is the HFA/AS female that suffer more from the lack of friends and social networking. Men suffer loneliness because of the lack of a (female) partner more than the lack of friends or a social network.

But there is a catch. Because of their extreme male brain-ness HFA/AS females tend to feel the same need (even if it is at a lesser degree than the HFA/AS male) to prove their self-worth by butting heads. They will do that either with their peers and come across as tomboys, either with their boyfriends and come across as dominant and aggressive, or with their husbands and come across as overbearing and controlling. A female, according to the gender stereotyping of society, is not expected to butt heads with others and when this happens the others are taken back by this exhibition of male aggressiveness.

If the 'others' don't butt heads back, the HFA/AS female will not be able to accept them as equal to her, or better. She will then either see them as 'weak' and needy and take over the roll of caregiver, by acting as a 'mother' or will see them as week and intellectually inferior and manipulate them by becoming a control freak as a means for survival.

Or will find them too weak, needy and intellectually inferior and refuse to mother them, control them, deal with them all together and choose isolation. This last kind of withdrawal can also happen to HFA/AS males, too, who see the people and the society around them as not worth dealing with at all and live a life withdrawn from social contacts.

The Binary Code of Existence

The words 'Binary Code' became widely known because of the internet and the computers. Yet, the binary code is nothing new. Everything in the universe exists because of a binary code, a duality, which can be easily understood as the two sides of ONE coin.

What if everything that exists in the whole universe, began as ONE that became two while still remaining one? If we think of a coin, it is ONE coin, yet it is also two; two sides, each representing one part of that one coin. The coin cannot exist without BOTH of these sides; neither can each side exist without the other. The coin and the two sides form an inseparable unit.

Or think of a magnet. It is one magnet, yet it has a positively charged side (+) and a negatively charged side (-). No matter how small the magnet is, it always retains the two opposite charged sides. The magnet, the positive side, and the negative side are like the coin: three that are one that is two.

It takes a little bit of thought to realize how complicated and yet how simple this is. The three that are ONE that is actually two. To be able to grasp this concept of the three being one, while is the one is actually two, needs a bit of an open mind, a way of thinking that is able to step outside the 'box' of today's science, because science will insist that three cannot be one and one can never be two. Yet, a coin exists as much as a magnet exists to prove that even if this seems impossible to exist, it does exist. It exists all around us, while science has gone to great lengths to disregard this fact and make us believe otherwise.

If you are able to allow your mind to step outside the box of today's science, then you are ready to step into the true world of the Autistic mind. Enter at your own risk. It might get a bit confusing, but I will try and keep things as simple as possible.

An Introduction

In the last 20 or so years science has been trying to explain the phenomenon that is called 'Autism.' After all these years and a lot of research that takes place all around the world in an attempt to solve the puzzle, explain the enigma, and understand the origin of this so called disability, science is no where near in understanding what Autism is.

The main reason is that science, simply put, does not have the ability to 'see' all that Autism is. Today's science is based on facts that can be measured, research that can be dublicated, and refuses to accept anything beyong the obvious and tangible. That is why it took Psychology so long to find a place under the Sun of Science, Psychology was not tangible until it could prove things through research, through MRI's, through tangible methods and measures.

When Science first appeared, it was very different than what it is today. Astrology for example was seen as a science together with astromony, philosophy and mathematics went hand in hand, as did medicine with religion. Somehow our ancestors understood that the world is not based ONLY on tangible things, but also on things as thought, intuition, even mystery and a bit of magic.

Today, we have scrapped away anything that cannot be witnessed, recorded and measured in the way we understand the world through science. Religion, intuition, mysticism, and magic have been discarted, rejected. Yet, when you ask most people they will admit they have a soul, that they have intuition, that they believe in coincidence, in luck. These things can't be measured either, yet they seem to play an important role in our lives.

Why is science then rejecting them? Why is science so afraid to acknowledge that there is more out there than what we can see, and measure in the physical world?

Could it be that the answer to the phenomenon called Autism lays in the realm that science can't acknowledge? Is it possible that the Auties and Aspies out there know but don't share what they know out of fear of being ridiculed by the established scientific world?

There is only one way to find out. Challenge the scientific world, by offering it the answers it seeks, and explaining how these answers can be ALSO measured in such a way for science to understand and accept.

This is what this blog will attempt to do.

Explain things in the same way our ancestors did, by coupling the logic and the intuition to solve the mystery of Autism. Because only by coupling these two, a solution is possible. Autism is the key to understanding the shortcomings in the way Science has scraped away of all the magic that our Universe contains and has retained dry data.

If you are a sceptic, then maybe this blog might allow you to see things from a different perspective. If you think you already know it all, then maybe this blog is not for you.

I am not a scientist, I am a person with Asperger's Syndrome who is making an attempt, an effort to explain from inside out what Autism is, what it does, and how it does it. That is all.