Category: Blog Posts

A large number of adults with Asperger’s Syndrome suffer from depression. Scientists don’t know if this is a result of the struggles and rejections they face in life or if it’s because of the way their brains are hard wired. As Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen said in a recently published study on Asperger’s and depression, “Adults with Asperger’s Syndrome often suffer with secondary depression due to social isolation, loneliness, social exclusion, lack of community services, underachievement, and unemployment.”What we now know, regardless of the causes, when your loved one has Asperger’s Syndrome and shows symptoms of depression, alarm bells to go off. The study mentioned above found that there’s a significant increase in suicidality among adults with Asperger’s. They are ten times more likely to have suicidal thoughts, suicidal plans and suicidal attempts than the general population, which is even more than those who have psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia.

Up until now, studies on Asperger’s Syndrome and depression have been concentrating on preadolescents, and they show a low rate of suicidal behavior. So, even though previous studies have shown that there’s a link between autism and suicidal thoughts, these findings about adults with AS come as a surprise to many. What concerns me is that many adults with Asperger’s have lived their lives undiagnosed, so they haven’t sought help from a mental health professional unless they’ve experienced severe mood or psychotic changes.

Nomi Kaim of Asperger/Autism Newtwork (formerly Asperger’s Association of New England or AANE) describes poignantly how depression affects someone with Asperger’s. She highlights the paradoxical battle that goes on inside in the following areas of life:

• Those with Asperger’s focus on and gain comfort from their special area(s) of interest. Depression steals any delight in doing such activities. This leaves an immense sense of emptiness.
• People with Asperger’s Syndrome deal in concrete, black and white thinking. Depression forces them leave the comfort of these thoughts as they have to learn to deal with overwhelming emotions they are unprepared to handle.
• People with Asperger’s Syndrome find comfort in being alone. Depression makes it essential to seek out others so they don’t spiral into self-destruction, which causes the pain of socializing to become more pronounced and threatens their sense of being self-sufficient.
• People with Asperger’s Syndrome hate to be touched. Depression creates a need for physical yearning to be held and comforted, which, in turn, may leave them feeling violated.

This study highlights the need for us to be alert and prompt about seeking professional help for our Aspie loved ones who are depressed. If you live near Portland, Oregon/Vancouver, Washington, please contact my office and schedule an appointment. Together we can create new ways for them to cope with this situation before it becomes a tragedy.

Have you noticed that your Aspie struggles to understand that someone is “pulling their leg”? Or they’re confused by irony, pretense, metaphor, and deception? Their “mind blindness” and difficulty with empathy cause them to be clueless in social situations such as these and they need help to navigate through them.

Empathy is a complex system of emotional empathy and cognitive empathy and multiple transitions between the two. To help clarify this issue, I wrote an article for PsychCentral discussing the difference between emotional empathy and cognitive empathy and how you can help your loved one bridge the empathy gap. I’d encourage you to click here to read the entire PsychCentral article. (And while you’re there, will you share this information from your favorite social media platform, too?)

Most Neuro-Typicals make the transition between emotional empathy and cognitive empathy very easily, and thereby strike an easy balance between the two. Aspies, on the other hand, find it very difficult to accomplish this. The resulting disconnect between cognitive empathy and emotional empathy really defines Asperger Syndrome.

They struggle to recognize where someone’s distress is coming from (Cognitive Empathy) and they struggle with knowing how awful someone is feeling (Emotional Empathy). And they can’t easily move between the two and they’re unable to put personal needs aside for the moment and reach out to comfort another. Another factor is that true empathy also requires the ability to talk about this integration.

Don’t misunderstand. Those with Asperger’s can be deeply moved by life experiences. Yet they’re unable to speak to those responses through their own mental reasoning. And because those feelings can become so intense without having any way to express them, those with Asperger’s shut down to protect themselves. They avoid eye contact, because it adds to the emotional overload. It’s hard for them to hear your words and change their focus when their feelings are so overwhelming.

Because those with Asperger’s can’t bridge that gap, family member must make a bridge for them with comforting, supportive and loving words. One way to reduce the emotional overload for Aspies and NTs alike is to have a calming and knowledgeable professional to help sort things out.

If you anticipate an emotionally trying time approaching, such as the death of a loved one, a psychologist can help your Aspie reason through what’s happening to himself and to the dying loved one. An objective professional can put words to the emotions that well up. If you live near Portland, OR/Vancouver, WA, please contact my office and schedule an appointment. With practice in therapy, your family may be able to talk about the events to come and plan a course of action, thereby averting the need for, and the resulting trauma of, any unprepared sudden emotional transition.

How do you determine what’s right and what’s wrong for yourself? How do you judge the actions and ethics of others? Are we hardwired with a set of standards? What accounts for the differences among people? Neuroscience of morality is uncovering the remarkable way in which reason and emotion activate the brain networks when we make decisions, especially moral judgments.

As studies are conducted using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) patterns are emerging, which give us clues as to what is going on in the brain. A CNN article, “How your brain makes moral judgments”, reports on many of these findings. Here are a few that I found fascinating…

Joshua D. Greene, associate professor at Harvard University, published an influential study in 2001. His study suggests that the three brain structures involved in the emotional processes that influence moral decisions are the medial prefrontal cortex, the posterior cingulate and angular gyrus. Other studies also confirm that these areas, as well as the ventral prefrontal cortex are activated in processing moral judgments.

And there’s evidence that supports that we are hard-wired to activate these regions as we’re confronted with moral dilemmas.

Randy Buckner and colleagues wrote a 2008 study that says in part:

“Thirty years of brain imaging research has converged to define the brain’s default network…(this) default network is active when individuals are engaged in internally focused tasks including autobiographical memory retrieval, envisioning the future, and conceiving the perspectives of others.”

His study goes on to say that this default network can be defined by the interaction of multiple subsystems in the brain, i.e.,

“The medial temporal lobe subsystem provides information from prior experiences in the form of memories and associations that are the building blocks of mental simulation. The medial prefrontal subsystem facilitates the flexible use of this information during the construction of self-relevant mental simulations. These two subsystems converge on important nodes of integration including the posterior cingulate cortex.”

Understanding the brain’s networking systems will enable us to better understand those with impaired abilities to make good moral judgments – which includes various mental disorders. Until there’s a cure, psychotherapy has proven very effective in helping people to live a much fuller and more meaningful life. A healthy brain equals healthy relationships. If you live near Portland, OR/Vancouver, WA, please contact my office and schedule an appointment.

Do you feel your biological age? Some days do you feel like your 18 again and others you could be 100? A recent CNN article discussed new research published by JAMA Internal Medicine online about our attitude toward aging and how it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. (Check out their slide show of 10 centenarians and their amazing accomplishments during “old age” like running a marathon and competing in the AU World Masters Games.) The way you perceive your health, limitations and wellbeing can greatly affect your mortality.

Researchers found that those who feel younger than their chronological age live longer than those who feel their age or feel older. While they don’t fully understand why, the researchers have noticed the following similar traits among the long-lived:

• This “youthful” group keeps more active.
• They maintain a healthy weight.
• They nurture their happyinterest in life.
• They engage in healthy behavior instead of risky behavior.
• They feel more in control.
• They have greater resilience.
• They have good social relationships.
• They keep a positive, optimistic attitude.
• They are content with their lives.

The two main characteristics that seem to help people live a longer life are consciousness and optimism. While the findings of this latest research are not new, it does reinforce that our conscious choices shape our quality of life. So what does your future look like?

It’s never too late to start living a more meaningful and happy life. I had the privilege of having one of my essays published in a wonderful book entitled, Sixty Things To Do When You Turn Sixty. (You can purchase a copy of the book here.) The big 6-0 is just the beginning! Do you have any stories of people who have accomplished remarkable things in their 80’s, 90’s, and 100’s? Please come to my Facebook page and share them with us.

This question was recently discussed by Richard Friedman, a professor of clinical psychiatry and the director of the psychopharmacology clinic at the Weill Cornell Medical College. He’s looking at the alarming increase in ADHD diagnoses and is trying to determine the best treatment options.

Here’s a snippet from his NY Times article, A Natural Fix for ADHD:

“Recent neuroscience research shows that people with A.D.H.D. are actually hard-wired for novelty-seeking…Compared with the rest of us, they have sluggish and underfed brain reward circuits, so much of everyday life feels routine and understimulating.

To compensate, they are drawn to new and exciting experiences and get famously impatient and restless with the regimented structure that characterizes our modern world. In short, people with A.D.H.D. may not have a disease, so much as a set of behavioral traits that don’t match the expectations of our contemporary culture. From the standpoint of teachers, parents and the world at large, the problem with people with A.D.H.D. looks like a lack of focus and attention and impulsive behavior. But if you have the “illness,” the real problem is that, to your brain, the world that you live in essentially feels not very interesting.”

Novel experiences release dopamine in the reward circuit of the brain, which varies in sensitivity from person to person. And according to research done by Dr. Nora D. Volkow, a scientist who directs the National Institute on Drug Abuse, people with ADHD have less sensitive receptors, so it takes more stimulation to satisfy them. Hence they are more easily bored. Changing their environment and helping them to modify their behavior has helped many to “outgrow” ADHD as Dr. Friedman’s article attests. I encourage you to read his entire article.

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Oregon and Washington have some of the highest percentages of children diagnosed with ADHD (9.1% to 11%) yet they receive a significantly less amount of treatment (3.15 to 5%). Most alarmingly however, is that nationwide more than 10,000 toddlers, ages 2 and 3, are given ADHD drugs! I can’t help but wonder what the far-reaching consequences of this will be.

Medication is not the only option for treatment of ADHD. Psychotherapy has proven to be very effective in helping children with ADHD. I encourage you to consult with a mental health professional and explore these healthier, alternative treatments for ADHD. If you live near Portland, OR/Vancouver, WA, please contact my office and schedule an appointment.

Read more on my website: ADD and ADHD.

Have you ever heard the word chronotype? It’s a way of classifying whether your internal circadian clock is set for you to be a night owl or a morning person. Our society is greatly shaped by the belief that early risers will be the movers and shakers and those who are night owls are the partiers and are more creative. We’ve all heard this sentiment in sayings such as “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise” or “The early bird gets the worm”.

The Harvard Review carries an article by Christoph Randler, a professor of biology at the University of Education in Heidelberg, Germany on his study of morning people verses evening people and their role in job performance. He found that there’s a genetic predisposition to whether you’re a morning person or night owl. And those who wake up early are more likely to be productive. Morning people anticipate problems and try to minimize them. Evening people, on the other hand, tend to be more creative.

The Huffington Post has an article by Dr. Michael Breus, clinical psychologist and board certified sleep specialist, and he reports that the brain structure actually differs between night owls and early risers. “Compared to early risers and intermediates, night owls showed reduced integrity of white matter in several areas of the brain. White matter is fatty tissue in the brain that facilitates communication among nerve cells. Diminished integrity of the brain’s white matter has been linked to depression and to disruptions of normal cognitive function.” The article also said night owls are prone to significant tobacco and alcohol use. They are inclined to eat more and have less healthful diets. On the positive side, they tend to be more analytical and have more stamina.

Can a person change from night owl to morning person? According to a recent CNN article, there are 19 ways to trick yourself into becoming a morning person. They involve creating a new routine and having a definite goal in mind. Some of them include:

• Make the change in 15-minute increments.
• Turn off the electronics at least 1 hour before bedtime.
• Use that hour to prepare for the next day.
• Write out your to-do list and get those things off of your mind.
• Create an environment conducive to sleep – darken the room, turn the temperature down to 65˚F.
• Avoid eating or drinking a lot before going to bed.
• Don’t hit the snooze button, but get up. Going back to sleep may put you into a deep sleep stage, which will make you really groggy.

A good sleep routine is crucial to optimum health, job performance, and quality of life. A night owl trying to fit into a morning person society may suffer from sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation can have serious long-term effects as it can escalate into psychological disorders like depression and anxiety. If you feel this is a problem for you, please contact a mental health care professional in your area. If you live near Portland, OR/Vancouver, WA, please contact my office and schedule an appointment today.

By proactively managing your sleep pattern, you could create an extra hour in your day. How would you use it? Please join me on my Facebook page and tell me about it.