Something we’re seeing more in the media is evidence that a growing number of adults are determining that their ADHD diagnoses may have prevented accurate diagnosis of autism. Once properly diagnosed, these adults often feel a tremendous sense of freedom and self understanding. The piece from NPR (via WNYC) excerpted below shares the stories of some of these adults. If you are in the greater Cleveland area and recognize yourself in their tales, and you would like to talk to someone about determining with certainty whether what you’re experiencing is ADHD, we hope you’ll reach out.
Sam Harvey
25, graduate student in writing and rhetoric, St. Cloud, Minn.
I graduated high school with average grades and went to St. Cloud State University where I decided to go for special education. When I started learning about autism, I saw a lot of similarities between these students and me. We learned about the diagnostic criteria and, on a whim, I applied the criteria to me and found that I fit into almost every one of them. However, I went onto the Autism Speaks website and read some of their stuff about what autism was and “realized” I wasn’t autistic because I was doing just fine in school and I was talking and I was starting to have friends, so I couldn’t be autistic.
I graduated in 2012 and started teaching. In the first six weeks, a supervisor who taught autistic students asked me if I was autistic, and I had to pause because this was a person who would know. I replied, “possibly,” and that was the last thing I thought about it because I remembered what I had read on Autism Speaks website.
A year later, in my second year of teaching special education, one of my students asked me if I was autistic. Now I was seriously wondering if I was. During those two years of teaching, I was socially disciplined for being “unteacherly.” My supervisors and fellow teachers set out to “rid me of my unteacherlike qualities,” qualities like my struggle with face-to-face communication, talking on the phone, being obsessed with movies and analyzing them and talking about them for hours, etc.