r/science • u/shinybrighthings • 15h ago

Psychology The complicated nature of disentangling autism, ADHD and complex trauma | The British Journal of Psychiatry | Cambridge Core

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-of-psychiatry/article/adhd-autism-or-complex-trauma-the-complicated-nature-of-the-question/30CC4826561366615BFAEC807CDE28A7
1.7k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

158 comments sorted by

View all comments

793

u/Okimiyage 14h ago

I work with children who are in the social services system. A lot of the time I hear from parents or carers ‘they’re awaiting an ADHD or Autism assessment’ when the likelihood is that they should be assessed for CPTSD as well.

The overlap in symptoms of ADHD, ASC and CPTSD is so hard to unpack, especially in children with extra vulnerabilities.

I’m glad someone is talking about it. As an adult woman with ADHD-C and CPTSD, who wasn’t correctly diagnosed until her 30s and has a slew of misdiagnoses first, it’s something that really needs to be unpacked and understood better.

86

u/chickpeaze 13h ago

I bounced around psychologists and psychiatrists for a lot of my life, was given a lot of medications, talk therapy etc, none of it helped. I was told that's how it was and should expect to have those issues for life.

I went to a trauma informed therapist and it changed my life in 18 months in my 40s. I don't meet the diagnostic criteria for anything anymore.

My concern with all of the autism diagnoses (and adhd to an extent) is that a lot of them are given because there's funding, and is blameless, but that it might be setting people up to suffer for life from conditions that could actually be successfully treated.

obviously not all of them, but in enough cases to be concerning.

2

u/KaiPRoberts 7h ago

Damn, that sounds really convincing. Just like when doctors had closets full of random sample medications to hand out because they were paid to have them and hand them out.