Trying to tell my story maybe a rant

dwfieldjr

Back in 2006 a resident dr at the VA diagnosed me with schizophrenia. They only thought that because both of my parents had schizophrenia. I told them about a bunch of weird stuff I saw around the house when I was a teenager.

Fast forward to 2009 after I had been through many residence drs they decided to put me into cbt with another student therapist. It didn’t go over very well they wanted to video record all of our sessions and just talk about my sex life.

I got frustrated with the Va after that then closed up. I was just one of those patients that just wanted his medicine renewal and sent home because I felt with every other problem I told them they had some new weird diagnoses and some different type of medication. The last diagnosis ended with schizotypal personality disorder. Here I was stuck on risperdal which is an antipsychotic.

Any social life I had went down the tubes because I was no longer able to drink at parties and have a good time. I kept telling the Va that I was really paranoid and nervous all of the time and a I a big thing to get off of my chest to a trained professional but, they just looked at me like I had lobsters crawling out of my ears.

After that whole ordeal the Va said I could do tellumed service at a Va in my home town and I wouldn’t have to travel. Talking to the dr on the other end made me feel like I was talking to mr Mackey from South Park. I put up with him for a few years. He switched my risperdal to geodon.

I’m not sure if it was just in my head or not but, it felt like geodon took a lot of paranoia away from me.
I worked up the courage to call my insurance to try and find a real therapist in my town and I think I found a good one she straightened this one problem I was having out for me. She recommended to find a different dr so I did.

Insurance could only find one in a town in Iowa that was about an hour away. There was a language barrier with this dr. He lower my geodon to fast because he didn’t understand what I was saying. But it only took a week for everything to level out. I told him about my bad anxiety and he prescribed Paxil and Ativan. Looking back I wish I would have just took the Ativan.

That dr in Iowa was no longer in network so I found one in Missouri about a half hour away from my town. My therapist at the time told me to start with a clean slate. This dr I’m seeing now says that he thinks I have Asperger’s and says that medication doesn’t do very much good for people like me. He also said that I have been on this stuff for so long that he didn’t know what would happen if I tapered off of it.

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TheGal

Oh, I'm sorry you've been bounced around to so many different doctors and therapists, it sounds like no one took the time to get you know you. that is not only frustrating, infuriating, but heartbreaking.

I don't have a family doc or a pdoc right now and am getting bounced around by walk-in clinics which doesn't make me feel safe.

How do you feel about the newer Asperger's diagnosis? Does it seem to fit?


Has anyone ever gone through the DSM Manual with you to get YOUR feedback as to what your diagnosis could be?

Hope things get better for you...

The_little_didgee

I can relate to your experience.

There appears to be a vulnerability to psychosis in people diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder/Aspergers. I've been told this by doctors. It's also been written about in academic papers. It may not apply to all individuals with an ASD diagnosis but there definitely is a relationship in some people. I'm one of those people. I had a psychotic illness in my twenties.

Schizotypal PD is a differential diagnosis and is considered a part of the schizophrenia spectrum. There are a lot of similarities with ASD. Before I was diagnosed I wondered if I had that personality disorder.

Medication doesn't help much with ASD.

What do you think of the Asperger diagnosis?

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Dx: Didgee Disorder

dwfieldjr

Thanks I think asd is more fitting to what I feel. Just wish the VA doctors at the time had more experience before putting me on antipsychotics.

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TheEbonyEwe

I can relate to this (and sorry for the late reply.) I was actually diagnosed with autism while still in the USAF before I retired at 42. After that, I've had 3 VA centers in Idaho, Arizona and KY tell me they have no support programs for adults with spectrum disorder conditions. Seems like the only people they're interested in paying attention to is combat vets with PTSD and anything outside of that is pretty much, "good luck, but F off" kind of mentality. I'm yet to find any program, in/off network with Tricare that offers any kind of therapy. It's ridiculous the lack of support there is for veterans let alone anyone with this diagnosis. They tried to put me on antipsychotics too which tells you how useless and uninformed they are. Nothing ever helped. Sorry they wasted your time. I hope you find some answers or something that helps. I found a lot of info in reading self-help books. Just steer clear of anything that suggests you can be cured. Autism/Aspergers is not a disorder or a disease. It's just a different way of thinking. Yes, there's better ways to cope, socially and reading about it can help that, but some of these dumb sites like autismspeaks.com which tell you that you can be cured with therapy are crap. The only thing they want you to do is learn to mask and rehearse better instead of spreading awareness and acceptance.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents and opinion and we all know about opinions. lol Good luck, fellow veteran.

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Dx: Higher functioning autism (Aspie)
Depression, ADD