Asperger's syndrome

[Guest guest]

ASPERGER'S

 

IT'S A SYN-DROME

 

After years of campaigning by the parents of Piers Bolduc - a young man with

Asperger syndrome who was incorrectly diagnosed as schizophrenic and

incarcerated in Broadmoor - health chiefs have finally promised that moves are

in hand to secure his release.

 

Stephen Ladyman, minister responsible for mental health, told Piers' MP David

Liddington that he would ensure the 28-year-old ( who has spent nine years in

the special hospital for the criminally insane) was released as " expeditiously

as possible " .

 

That was more than a month ago; since when inertia at the Home Office and

Department of Health has meant that a precious place secured for Piers at The

Hayes, a special centre in Bristol for those with Asperger's (the high-achieving

end of the autism spectrum) has gone to someone else. Thus Piers remains

wrongly locked up for slightly wounding a young man with a penkife while taking

powerful anti-psychotic drugs he should not have been prescribed.

 

Piers' case, first highlighted in the Sunday Telegraph, is far from isolated,

Ladyman told the Commons that 31 people with autism, 21 of those with

Asperger's, were held in three special hospitals. But many more are

inappropriately detained, sectioned under the Mental Health Act in secure

psychiatric wards, hospitals, care homes and units for those with learning

disabilities having sufered misdiagnosis and inappropriate treatment often with

powerful anti-psychotic drugs.

 

The one positive aspect of Piers' detention in Broadmoor was that his condition

was recognised and steps were taken to wean him off the drug cocktail that had

worsened his condition. The same cannot be said for Matthew Thomas how 43, who

has been in and out of hospital since he was 17.

 

Matthew was sucked into the mental health system in 1978 when a breakdown during

his exams led, as with Piers, to a wrongful diagnosis. His parents, Jackie and

Geoff Thomas, have been unable to get their son out of the system. Even though

Asperger's was finally diagnosed nine years later, Matthew remained on the

cocktail of anti-psychotics, tranquillisers and anti-depressants he had taken

most of his life.

 

To his parents Matthew had always appeared a " bit different " . But it was not

until he was studying for his O levels that he suffered what everyone thought

was a mental breakdown. His parents, then knowing nothing of Asperger syndrome,

went along with the diagnosis.

 

It led to two prolonged sessions of electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) and a

cocktail of powerful drugs - his parents list no fewer than 23 different ones in

those early years. As they watched their son get worse, only one registrar

dared challenge the diagnosis and suggest Mathew's schizophrenia was " atypical " .

His already sceptical parents read everything they could and became convinced

Matthew was not schizophrenic. They sent him to the US where the diagnosis was

finally overturned. Back in the UK a year later at the Maudley, he was

officially diagnosed with Asperger's and his parents were told he " did not have

one schizophrenic feature " .

 

Unlike Piers, there has been no concerted effort to break Matthew's addiction to

powerful drugs and today he lives in a psychiatric special unit in Wales.

" Matthew's life was stolen at 17 and for us parents it has been like a living

bereavement " said his mother.

 

Nick Priechenfried was only 14 when he was given his first dose of

anti-pyschotic drugs by a GP. Although another doctor took him off them the

reprieve was shortlived. Nick was correctly diagnosed with Asperger's but seven

years later he was still sectioned and diagnosed as schizophrenic and put on the

cocktail of psychiatric medicine his mother says wrecked his life.

 

He ended up in the medium secure unit at Horton Hospital, Epsom, with very ill

and disturbed patients. Even though leading autism experts confirmed the

diagnosis of Asperger's, Nick's treatment with powerful anti-psychotics

continued. Folowing other disastrous placements, Nick eventually went to the

Eric Shepherd Unit in Hertfordshire. Three years ago psychiatrists there weaned

him off all medication, resulting in a huge impovement in both his mental and

physical health. As Nick says: " If you are put on anti-psychotics when you do

not need them, you soon develop a psychosis.

 

What has happened to people like Piers, Matthew and Nick is nothing short of

scandalous. But it is a simple message that they and their parents have been

trying to convey to Stephen Ladyman and his fellow health chiefs. Not only is

the continuing misdiagnosis, treatment and inappropriate placements for people

with Asperger's devastating for those involved, it actually costs millions. An

investment in proper services now - particularly with the huge increase in

children being diagnosed on the autistic spectrum - would save money in the

future. Why isn't the government listening?

 

Reprinted from the June 2004 edition of Private eye.