[MyTwoAs]

Has anyone been in a situation where professionals disagree?<br><br>
My son was evaluated by a psychologist for possible Asperger's Syndrome - while he scored in the very likely range on a few tests/questionnaires the psychologist diagnosed him with anxiety. She saw him for a total of three hours while she administered some standardized tests.<br><br>
Today we had a follow-up visit with the child psychiatrist that he's been seeing for two years and she said he very clearly has Asperger's Syndrome. The psychiatrist said that not only does he meet the DSM-IV criteria (which the psychologist also said) but he has alot of the additional 'issues' associated with children with AS (sensory issues, motor planning issues, feeding issues, anxiety, etc). The psychiatrist's teenaged son has Asperger's Syndrome so she's also experienced with it from a parenting standpoint.<br><br>
If you have had differing diagnoses how did you handle it?

 

[crl]

Well, my DS is only 3.5 and his differing diagnoses came before he turned three. We decided to essentially "believe" the second opinion because we felt that doctor had a more accurate view of our child. (The first doctor told us DS had "no language" and did not understand anything we were saying to DS. This was patently wrong. Really hurt the doctor's credibility with us.)<br><br>
For me, the real question was what we should be doing. And we did not want to proceed with ABA as recommended by the first doctor. The second opinion recommended against ABA and recommended continuing OT and ST and putting DS in preschool. We felt that was a reasonable course of action. And DS has made huge progress so we continue to feel pretty comfortable with our decisions regardless of his diagnosis and therapy, etc. (Also he is very young and if he continues to have issues/delays we will likely have him reevaluated prior to starting kindergarten--in addition to school evaluations along the way.)<br><br>
That might be one way for you to approach this. How would your child's therapy ect be different dpending on which diagnosis you believe? If it would not, then maybe it doesn't matter. If it would, maybe you want to seek a third opinion.

 

[MyTwoAs]

Thanks for shedding some light on this Catherine. Since anxiety is a part of Asperger's Syndrome the 'treatments' are similar. The psychologist recommended we start with play therapy and then move on to a social skills class. The psychiatrist said play therapy is a good start but that it is imperative we get him in a social skills group as soon as possible plus we also need to introduce social stories to him. The psychiatrist also said addressing the comorbid issues (sensory, motor-planning, etc) is important and that we should continue the OT. The psychologist made no discussion regarding his other issues. So basically the psychiatrist's recommendations were more comprehensive and addresses all of his issues vs. just the anxiety component.

 

[crl]

Glad I helped a bit. I still struggle sometimes wanting to be sure of the "right label" but overall I feel sure that for now it isn't the important thing for us.