Please note I am not a healthcare professional or a doctor.
I cannot provide a diagnosis or give any medical advice.
Therefore I cannot answer questions like "is my child autistic ?" other than by telling you to go and see a specialist ================================================================
Please be aware that if you are in the US it will usually take at least 24 hours until I can answer your question, as I'm in Europe and don't have access to my email during the day.
================================================================
Please also be aware that I'm a person with autism. My answers may sometimes be very blunt and direct and I may tell you things you won't like to hear. Diplomacy is certainly not among my talents. I'm never being rude on purpose, and I always try not to hurt or offend people, but it has happened before and may happen again. It's NEVER on purpose. I just want to help.
=======================================================================
What I *can* do for you is gather information on any aspect of autism
and therapy of autism you're interested in and give you my personal oppinion about it (if you want to hear it) or, if it applies, tell you about my personal experience. I can answer all questions about what life is like for an autistic person.
In the past years I have also read a lot about autism and its comorbid conditions and related subjects (as I am experiencing symptoms of most of these or know others who do) , so I have accumulated a lot of layman knowledge in this area
(AD(H)D, Tourette's Syndrome, OCD, sleep disorders, allergies, sensory integration dysfunction, learning difficulties, left/right-brain, giftedness, Irlen Syndrome, prism glasses, executive dysfunction (aka. "inertia"), "special" diets).
Experience I am an adult diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome/High Functioning Autism and ADD.
Expert: Celtica Date: 6/26/2008 Subject: Bipolar vs Autism
Question My 13 yr old son was diagnosed with Autism and Bipolar can he have both? What is the difference as far as symptoms?
Answer Hi Damaris,
autistic people, like everyone else, can also suffer from other disorders at the same time, and there are lots of people who have double diagnoses. I think this is common practice if autism alone doesn't explain all the symptoms a person has.
Bipolar is a mood disorder (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipolar_disorder), and people with this disorder seem to have manic episodes (which means they feel exageratedly good, I mean hyper and manic, not the way you and I'd feel when we'd say we're feeling good) for a while followed in most cases by depressive episodes where they feel really horrible.
Autism, on the other hand is basically a disorder that has nothing to do with one's mood at all. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism, or it's variant Asperger's Disorder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome), its main symptoms is a marked lack of social skills, difficulties with speech and many people on the spectrum also experience sensory issues. A number of people seem to have both though, which I wasn't really aware off until I did a google search for this post.
