The Asperger Syndrome can be detected early on in infancy and childhood, but only if parents or guardians are aware of the fact that there is a condition like so. Very often, especially in developing countries, the Asperger Syndrome goes both undiagnosed and untreated.

The reason for this seeming apathy is that children with Asperger Syndrome do not exhibit overt unusual physical manifestations (unlike children with Down syndrome) or cognitive manifestations (like delay in their language skills.) In many cases, children with Asperger Syndrome even exhibit superior vocabularies at a very young age; and show in-depth knowledge of a particular subject. As compared with children with high-functioning autism, a child with Asperger Syndrome is often times sociable and friendly.

However, things do change as they grow. One of the most prominent Aspergers symptom is the lack of muscle coordination. This is often times referred to as clumsiness or even the inability to focus on the task at hand. Unless the child is given proper instructions on how to handle muscle coordination, Aspergers symptoms in adults can be seen in the erratic movement of limbs in excitable times, and the apparent inability to perform “regular” tasks without mishaps. Some adults who underwent training in this area of development as a child often lead almost normal lives. They are able to control their actions more easily than those who were not taught how to coordinate their actions.

Also, like most adults with any form of autism (from mild to severe) adults with Aspergers syndrome cannot focus face-to-face with the person they are conversing with. Their shifty eye movements and what seems to be a lack of interest in what other people are saying are due to the fact that they are easily influenced by any form of stimuli. This is another one of the more prominent Aspergers symptoms – the hypersensitivity to outside forces like light and sounds. They are easily distracted especially if the topic or task at hand is something that they are not particularly keen on. On the other end of the spectrum, when they are interested in a particular topic, they will carry on discussions about it until they literally exhaust themselves. Adults with Aspergers syndrome will approach people they know or even complete strangers in an effort to make conversations, as a way of extending friendship. Unfortunately, they tend to discuss topics at length without regard as to whether or not the listener is still interested.

There are two prevailing misconceptions about adults with Asperger Syndrome. One: that they take things too literal and most of them are not prone to the intricacies of humor and irony. Children with Asperger Syndrome often exhibit these symptoms, but recent studies show that adults with Asperger Syndrome can grasp both humor and irony just as easily as anyone else can.

Two: the misconception that adults with Asperger Syndrome are prone to violence is something that is both unfounded and uncalled for. Very often, adults with Asperger Syndrome are subject to ridicule and even discrimination simply because they do not “fit” in with the normal crowd. Nonetheless, there have been no recorded incidences of adults with Asperger Syndrome (or even children with Asperger Syndrome) becoming violent when unprovoked at any point of their lives.

Adult Asperger usually affects the psychological state of the person that renders them to have some deficits in their normal behaviors towards the society and even in their own home.

This condition does not really differ from what is being experienced by children who were diagnosed at an early age. The person will also have some difficulties in their communication skills, such as a poor eye contact and facial expressions. They also experience problems on repetitive behaviors that interfere in their normal activities of daily living. Some of this repetitive behaviors can also harm or cause injuries to the person if not given due attention. Furthermore, they also experience obsessions on objects of interest, such as phone books, which cause their attention to be deviated, thus they have a lack in focus in the things they do.

The usual concern of families and the significant other of the patient is how the condition will be treated with drugs and diet. There is no specific drug to treat Adult Asperger. Many companies have advertised that herbal products are effective, but these are not proven by health care professionals to be effective.

Whenever the psychiatrist recommend drug therapy, he or she usually prescribes medications that are directed towards treating the symptoms of the patient, but not really to eradicate the condition completely. They typically prescribe anti-psychotic, stimulants, and selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors or SSRI’s drugs to control the patient’s anxiety, aggression, compulsive behaviors, obsessive behaviors, and depression.

Another misconception about Adult Asperger is that many wrongly assumed that this condition required a special diet, such as low fat diet, high protein diet, or diets that are high in vitamins and minerals. However eventually the medical community found that the patient just needs a balanced diet that have an adequate proportion of carbohydrates, protein, and fats, as well as, an adequate amount of vitamins, minerals, and water.

This is because the patient is not actually suffering from any physiological disturbances, or any condition that affects their nutritional status. Unlike in patients with Gastroenteritis, Kidney Problems, Cancer, Heart ailments and Liver problems who require a specific diet for a specific condition to control the disease process; In Adult Asperger, the patient can still eat anything they want, with no restrictions, but the diet should be controlled. Controlling diet will help them prevent diseases that proliferate due to bad eating habits and food intake.

Many thought that Asperger’s syndrome is only common among young children, but this condition can also affect people of advanced ages, and thus the term “Adult Asperger” was coined for those afflicted with this condition.

Even though the effect of this condition differs on the age groups, the treatments are generally the same. The goals of the treatment are to help the patient in interacting normally in the society, and to teach him or her how to express their feelings towards others. The appropriate therapy for Adult Asperger is directed towards the modification of behavior; this is the main goal of the treatment.

Behavioral therapy will probably include the following process:

ALLOWING THE PATIENT TO INTERACT WITH OTHER PEOPLE.

Since the cognitive skills of the person is usually not affected by the condition, he or she can probably learn normally new things and sense a need that their learnings will be imparted to other people. The therapy will include helping them in simple tasks with other people, such as a simple conversation, playing a non-stressful sport, and eating at the same table.

ALLOWING THE PATIENT CONTROL HIS REPETITIVE BEHAVIORS.

Being obsessive-compulsive is one of the behaviors that is very difficult to control in patients with Adult Asperger. But psychiatrists would usually control repetitive-compulsive behaviors, like frequent tapping of walls, by setting limits to their behavior. In a typical scenario, he or she will be allowed to express this behavior, but will be asked to limit the number of times they are allowed to do it. This number is gradually reduced each day until the goal is met.

ALLOWING THE PATIENT TO EXPRESS HIS EMOTIONS.

This is probably the best measure if the interventions towards the client are successful. But for adult patients with Asperger’s Syndrome, this one could be one of the most difficult tasks to accomplish, because they are usually having a difficulty in expressing their emotions through talking, because of impairments in the motor skills in speech. But theirsensory centers for speech work normally, and thus they can express and can comprehend what others are saying as well.

In this step of the therapy, the psychiatrist will usually recommend that the patient should also undergo a series of speech therapy to correct the imperfections in his motor skills. When this phase is completed, the patient will be expected to verbalize his feelings normally so the health care provider can understand and get some much needed feedback to tailor the next treatment session.

ALLOWING THE PATIENT TO ACCEPT HIS OWN SELF

This maybe an essential step of the behavioral therapy, because it gives the patient a sense of their self and accept his condition. But this is not to help the patient gear towards isolating his self more from the society, instead he will be able to accept that he is different, but still can function normally as any other normal persons would do. It is very important in this step that he be given importance, and be taught the socially accepted behaviors and norms.

Adult Asperger’s disorder leads the patients to have difficulties in deciphering the emotions of others and difficulties in interpreting subtle interpersonal skills or facial expressions.

For example an Asperger patient might not understand conversations transmitted through eye contact. Often others label the patient as someone rude, cold, aloof and uncaring. At the same time it is natural for those who interact with the patient to feel that way, whereas it is completely unfair to the sufferer.

The Asperger disorder is a genetic neurological condition that makes the patient insensitive towards emotions and they cannot interpret them properly.

One of the major problems associated with Asperger’s is the lack of appropriate diagnosis.

Asperger’s has been identified and singled out from autism only in the last decade, there is very little information available about the behaviour of adults with such condition to date.

As children, these asperger adults may have stood out amongst their friends as being a bit “unusual”, yet at that time there was no specific diagnosis available. Hence there is a whole community of Asperger patients who still remain undiagnosed with this disorder as of today.

Another problem is that even when the diagnosis occurs, an Asperger patient might not agree to go into family counselling or accept any available assistance as they do not realise that they have a serious problem.

I had personally witnessed a case where my close friend’s mother was suffering from Asperger’s and he was honestly relieved to discover the reason for his mother’s emotional aloofness, yet he was devastated as soon as his mother refused to go into family therapy.

It wasn’t the mother’s fault as she simply felt no problems with her health but she couldn’t understand her son’s feelings of pain and rejection. In addition, she faced a lot of difficulties in interacting with her family and in-laws. Eventually, the son decided to reduce his conversations with the mother since it led to a lot of stress and sadness.

In most of the cases, when an Asperger patient is told that their actions are inappropriate or hurtful, they may possibly be shocked. On the other hand, their behaviour might be repeated unless there is some sort of intervention and the sufferer makes genuine efforts to change.

Technorati Tags: Adult Asperger’s, Adult Asperger’s disorder

Adult Asperger Symptoms are markedly different. This article highlights the more common ones.

Most of the literature available for information on Asperger’s is for kids. This may happen as the origin of the DSM-IV criteria for the diagnosis of this disorder is comparatively very recent.

Hence this disorder was identified in 1990’s, even though it was reported by an Austrian paediatrician much earlier in the year 1944.

The paediatrician originally referred it as autistic psychopathy. In the end this disorder is very rightly named after him subsequent to his death. If we consider the ratio, more males experience this disease as compared to the females.

However, there are various symptoms that differ from person to person. Some of the most prominent characteristics in males include:

1). Typical fields of interest or complete absorption in hobbies, more often than not involving numbers, special patterns and strict rules.

2). Normal to high intelligence. It would be astonishing to know that a few sufferers are mathematicians.

3). Problems in understanding others’ mood swings or may possibly not empathize with others.

4). They may not be able to comfort others or communicate with them due to the lack of empathy.

5). They might also have problems in agreeing with others point of view.

6). They do not understand abstract concepts very well and a typical Asperger sufferer does not take all the conversations literally.

7). They also cannot understand the intellectual forms of humor such as puns or sarcastic comments.

8). They have extreme difficulty in maintaining normal conversations.

9). Dealing with intimate solutions is almost impossible for the Asperger patients. For that mere reason the average divorce rate amongst such patients is around 80%.

Technorati Tags: Adult Aspergers, Asperger Disease, aspergers symptoms

Asperger’s syndrome is a lifelong situation, even though it tends to stabilize over a period of time and improvements are seen in a lot of cases. Adults have an ability to assess their own strengths and weaknesses. They are able to understand social cues and can also learn the social skills. A majority of the Asperger’s patients marry and do have children.

A few of the characteristics associated with this syndrome, for instance paying a lot of attention to the details and focusing interest on any one aspect can increase the chances of academic success and they may even turn out to be very successful in their life.

Most of the people diagnosed with Asperger’s seem to love technology and their natural career choice is engineering. However, it is not necessary that all these patients may excel in scientific areas only. A lot of Asperger’s patients include famous historians and scientists such as Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Mozart and Thomas Jefferson.

Many adults with Asperger’s syndrome also have other conditions and may possibly have symptoms of these conditions as well. They consist of:

•    Anxiety disorders,
•    Depression, especially during the teen years,
•    Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, also known as ADHD,
•    Non-verbal learning disorder,
•    Social anxiety disorder.

Technorati Tags: Adult Asperger, Adult Asperger Symptoms

How does one live with adult Aspergers? More to the point, how do you survive school and all the academic and non-academic interaction that goes with it if you have adult Aspergers? Adult Aspergers affects your social abilities and your ability to process nonverbal communication. Worse, the condition makes coping with formative social settings difficult. If you have adult Aspergers and you intend to put yourself through the college system, here are some tips that would help.

1. While applying to a college or for a program, indicate your disability. Don’t worry that this would affect your chances of getting in. State institutions are prohibited from discriminating against anyone for reasons of disability.

2. Obtain a certification of your condition from your doctor. You need this to qualify for your college’s disability support benefits and services.

3. Seek career counseling the soonest that you can. It’s never too early to plan ahead. People with adult Aspergers find it difficult to get jobs after graduation so planning ahead would surely help. Your advisor can help you zero in on careers that are are compatible with your strengths.

4. Get in touch with a medical provider who is near the campus. You never know, you might need one urgently and on short notice.

5. Socialize. Or, if this is too much for you, at least make an effort to do so. Socializing does not come easy to people with Aspergers.

6. Why not consider online classes? Some people with adult Aspergers get overwhelmed by classroom noise and harsh lighting. You can get these two concerns out of the way with online classes.

7. Read about your condition. Resources such as The Parenting Aspergers Resource Guide and others like it will help you understand your condition better. Aspergers is not easy to live with. Congratulate yourself. In making the decision to attend college, you are showing you will not be limited by your condition. If you could be that brave and go that far, there is no telling what heights you could reach someday.

Technorati Tags: Adult Aspergers, Asperger Disease, aspergers disorder, aspergers support