It was 1994 when I first heard the term, “Asperger Syndrome” (AS). Up to that point, I have worked in a variety of clinical settings ranging from psychiatric hospitals to residential treatment centers to intensive home and school based therapy programs before settling into outpatient clinics and my private therapy practice in 2011. The children and adolescents that came to me had profound mental h
ealth conditions or disorders that ranged from Bipolar disorder, Anxiety Disorders, and Depression, Disruptive Behavior Disorders, Tourette’s and Tic Disorder to name a few. More often than not, these youth often had two, three, or even four co-occurring diagnoses. Throughout these treatment settings, I had met hundreds of people who had Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and couldn’t help them because I never knew it existed. Twenty years later, I find myself professionally immersed in the wonderful and complex world of those who think differently. I think back to the mid-1990’s when I worked with people who were misdiagnosed because the term “Aspergers” wasn’t widely acceptable by mental health professionals. The youth at this time did not even have the chance to understand ASD because the very professionals charged in their treatment didn’t know it existed. Even today, I still hear story after story about how individuals, many adult, were diagnosed with many different disorders and conditions excluding Aspergers and Autism Spectrum Disorder and yet they still feel “something else is going on…” Interesting side note, at the same time it was ignored or at best reduced to an diagnostic anomaly here in the US, Asperger Syndrome and the creation of subsequent supports was quickly becoming widely acceptable and available in Australia and the United Kingdom. Since then, I have dedicated my career to providing quality and caring clinical social work services to people of all ages in the form of individual, family, and group psychotherapy, ASD trainings & seminars, and consultation for individuals and their families who are challenged by ASD and related mental health problems. I am grateful to all of my clients past and present for telling me their stories and teaching me the many positives as well as the difficulties of living with ASD along the way.
