Help for Adult Aspergers?

I did a quck Google search and there is a support group for Aspergers on the Sunshine Coast on Facebook (don't know if you are on FB or not). There is also the Sunshine Coast Centre for Autism (just Google the details and it should come up).

Hope this helps! 🙂

Damn, sorry to hear that @Aspergeraa. Hopefully somebody on the boards knows something then 😉

Hi @Aspergeraa, I've been trawling the net for help for Aspergers in Oz I contacted tony@tonyattwood.co.au who put me onto berthineommensen@uqconnect.edu.au

Berthine is doing a research project for her thesis, I'm waiting to hear back from her and Tony is fully booked but replies and directs you where to get help.

Hope this helps.

Hi, I met Berthine and found they are so busy it is difficult to get any help for adult asperger's this was a few years ago now. Did you get any help or advice?

Hi Sissy8, just read your post after signing in.

It was a while ago I know, hope you found some support.

Its tough with a late adult diagnosis given the complete lack of support and service provision. I tried accessing an Adult ASD 'expert', was put on a long waiting list for a formal assessment/diagnosis and was quoted thousands for the pleasure! I'd been seeing a clinical psych and academic professor quite well known in public health circles who repeatedly dismissed my suggestion of ASD. In the end I was so desperate I asked if she work with the assessing/diagnosing psych to support me. By then the anxiety and panic was pretty much non stop and to make my point I explained that I was walking across a footbridge over traffic, could only watch my feet and try focus every single ounce of energy on watching my feet as I took tiny steps as I was haunted by shadows of people jumping over the side. In the end she advised I had 'perseveration', 'frontal lobe damage' and 'was too far gone'

Even though we both knew she had never actually seen inside my head, or at that stage I'd even had a brain scan I felt so pathologised, stigmatised, and at breaking point, had a complete breakdown.

i asked my GP for a recommendation to a psychiatrist she'd send her own child under the circumstances and she told me of one who was not taking on new patients, was booked out a year in advance, asked to be put in their waiting list, and in the mean time said I'd like to go on their appointment cancelation list and could be there within an hour if notified. Took more than 12 months to get my own appointments, but she very kindly put me on a cancellation list and I saw her fortnightly in her private practice as an outpatient, was diagnosed with autism, adhd, anxiety, panic, major depression, social anxiety and ptsd which I knew about after years of only being able to sleep for a few hours at a time before waking from nightmares. With all the 'advice' about asking for help and the burgeoning ASD/developmentally disordered industry complex for kids surely we too are worth more than demands for another 10 visits on a mental health plan and being held hostage in a holding pattern by so called professionals and experts vested with responsibility, a duty of care, and bound to upholding the human rights of people with so called 'disabilities' instead of only caring about paying off their Mercedes at the tax payers expense!

Despite having at least one job in some form during the week another on weekends, studied, and volunteering my time regularly in some in some capacity since I was 12 years old. For the first time in 30 years the only contact with the outside world I have now is a Telehealth appointment with the psych or my GP and the money has run out, I have a disability s pension card instead, which I've increasingly discovered seems to give license to some professionals to talk about me not to me when I'm in their presence!

Things are still pear shaped despite having a very full, extraordinary life and career until now, being resourceful, determined, persistent, appear healthy, happy and articulate I started falling over 2 years ago and was sent for a brain scan. No one said anything about the frontal lobe damage so I asked and was told it appeared 'normal'!

Since then I've struggling to find a a mentor, support, and just try and work out how to conceive of what I need to get unstuck and get my life. The reason I'm 'sick' is because I'm unsupported, stigmatised, pathologised and have finally worked the more frustrated i get, people who don't have a clue try and engage in discussions about the benefits of antipsychotics!

Am so over it and keen to hear about your journey since you first checked in all that time ago if you care to share any hard won lessons, advice, or just feel like venting! Always plenty to yarn about with so many dogooders out their devoid of any lived experience but claiming to know someone who knows someone who does. Helps capitalise on service provision and NDIS as part of their core business model - experts at siphoning off funding in attempt to gain power, prestige and authority!

til then, remember - you're never alone!