Two Families Of Mental Disorders

On my quest to better understand my problems, Dawson’s and now what we have recognized as Steven’s issues, I have determined that there is definitely a hereditary element in our genes.  We have had several instances over the course of the last 3 years, other than Dawson, that has given us pause and made us wonder if there is a large handful of Steven’s extended family with Asperger’s.  Now I am not saying my family is not full of issues, on the contrary.  Below is a list of disorders affecting my extended family.

Social Anxiety
Acute Anxiety Disorder
Clinical Depression
Bipolar Disorder
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Panic Disorder
Intermittent Explosive Disorder (yes it is real and tends to be co-morbid)
ADHD/ADD

That is just the tip of the iceberg.  Then we have Steven’s side.

There is a laundry list of issues here.  A lot not talked about like my family.  Also a lot untreated similar to some of my family.  Denial?  Lack of insurance?  Lack of education?  A combo of all I am sure.

Severe Borderline Personality Disorder
Severe Panic Disorder
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (Steven is absolutely 100% this and untreated.  It is getting worse as he gets older.)
Social Anxiety Disorder
And last but certainly not least Asperger’s Syndrome possibly High Functioning Autism.

That last one includes at least 4 other people with serious symptoms of the listed two disorders.  Diagnosed? Not three of the four.  Dawson is the only one with an actual diagnosis, confirmed and treated.

Now my question is this.  Do two gene pools of so many disorders, somehow collide when forming a child and kick that Autism gene into gear?  Is that possible?  Some research says yes.  Some research says no.

Once I was diagnosed with a rapid cycling, bipolar disorder a few months before Dawson was born, it worried me that I would pass on this issue to my kids.  It is after all, a hereditary disorder.  It is found in several family members of the same family.  And now days is being recognized where it wasn’t before.  Usually showing up in the early to mid twenties, Bipolar Disorder can be brought out by a traumatic event.  I know the event that brought mine out but it was on the cusp for many years before that.  This one event shoved me over the edge, so to speak.  I can’t help but wonder will Everett have this too?  Dawson doesn’t even though they ran out of mental disorders to pin on him on the quest for the correct diagnosis.  They said, “Hey you are bipolar, let’s try that medicine for him.”  Um… no.  He is not a rat in a lab.

I would love for a study to be done on our family, charting disorders in us as well as both extended families.  Test all the family members, even the “normal” ones, and see if there is a pattern.  It is said that they now have identified in the brain what causes some of these.  We know that depression and Bipolar disorders are a result of misfiring in the brain’s neurons.  Decreased serotoninergic neurotransmission is one of the main causes of mood, sleep and emotional problems.  This is fixed with medication called SSRIs.  This is a great medication for those who can take it and function.

So far there is no pill to help the issues of the brain that Autism Spectrum Disorders affect.  Having pin pointed the area of brain matter that doesn’t develop properly in infants that have a precursor for Autism (a sibling with one of the spectrum disorders), it makes me wonder if they can stop what is triggering the lack of brain development and when it affects the child.  In classic Autism, they see a heavy showing of symptoms early on, at least before 18 months.  In other disorders it is not obvious as early.  Dawson could be considered completely normal to the naked eye frome the age of birth all the way to 2.5 years of age.  It is only when we put him with other children his own age, in three-year preschool, that we started noticing a difference in his developmental abilities.  This is also the time I started actively questioning the doctor on what the cause was.  It was very irritating to be told he was normal and smart only to see symptoms (at the time I didn’t know were symptoms of Autism) it day in and day out.  By three years old he had stopped answering to his name and started his incessant pacing.  The tantrums, or as we call them meltdowns, started and were only made worse by our attempts to find out the cause.  Noise, having always bothered him, became a source of his fits but we wouldn’t figure out the cause of them until he turned four.  The world around him drove him crazy and for an entire year and a half we barely took him out in public (shopping, near busy streets, etc.).  Horrible you say? Yes for him.  If he wasn’t in his own home or at school or another predictable spot (my mom’s or my sister’s house), he would come completely unglued at anything going on new around him.  He would take to his room for hours and write letters and numbers in repeating patterns.  He hated for you to talk to him at all some days and wouldn’t talk to you either.  I slowly watched the boy I knew, so happy and so full of life, retreat into his mind and body.  Only when forced would he talk to you.  I had just had another child, which is what they said the cause of all this was.  I hate pediatricians to this day after all of this.  I knew better.

So I hope now, after the new evidence has been found,  for future children, they can somehow locate the gene or issue and fix it.  Gene tampering?  No I call it life altering.  Imagine some sort of brain surgery, like they perform in Parkinson Disease patients that could prevent the effects that Autism has on a brain.  Pipe dream?  Possibly, but stranger things have happened.  I mean they cloned a goat after all.  They transplant organs and full faces.   Electroshock therapy is an approved treatment of several psychoses in the mentally deranged world.  So is several brain surgeries.

I have no idea where I am going with this and maybe I am blowing smoke up my own tail, but 10 years ago doctors thought immunizations caused Autism.  We now know this is not the case, although some parents still believe it.  I am one that doesn’t agree with the whole immunization cause.  I tend to think that the higher functioning ASDs are not seen because it takes longer for them to fully affect the brain.  This was hands down the case with Dawson.  MRI scans of kids’ brains like Dawson found in every single child studied, that there was an abnormal lack of activity in brain cells in certain regions of white and gray brain matter.   This in turn was compared to infant brains of those children’s siblings.  An astonishing amount of participants were found to have similar brains as their Autistic sibling.  Would they BE Autistic?  Only time would tell unfortunately and most of the ones studied were found later on to have developed one of the spectrum disorders.  In classic siblings sometimes the other child would have some autistic tendencies, where as the other kids would have a higher functioning form of the disorder, such as PDD-NOS, Asperger’s, HFA, etc.  In high functioning children most of the siblings had tendencies to normal functioning brains.   When multiple children of one family were studied the results were like wild fire!  There were multiple children with the same form of Autism and or a different form of it, in the same immediate families.  In several cases all 3 to four children in one family had varying degrees of Autism. You can’t ignore that!

Reading the medical journals were like reading the list of ingredients on a list of food full of preservatives.  I had to dig and dig for translations.  It took me almost a week, but I have come to the conclusion that maybe one day my children’s children might not have to worry about this.  Maybe, just maybe, they will find the brain link and be able to prevent the switch from being flipped, or at the very least be able to put in place a treatment from birth using these MRI findings to prevent them from ever falling behind in development.

Do I want Dawson cured?  No.  It is who he is.  It is part of him and there is no cure, only treatment.  Would I want an intervention on behalf of my grand kids?  Yes.  I’m sure it looks as if I am contradicting myself in the same paragraph, but hear me out.  I have grown to love Dawson just the way he is and everyone around him is going to accept him for what he is and who he is or I will die trying.  It has been a massively hard road.  We are all the stronger for it, but I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy because of the toll it takes on the child, the parents and their extended family and friends.  So yes I would like to prevent it if it’s possible in future generations.  It would be an awesome thing to be able to stop something like this.  It wouldn’t be taking away their personalities.  No, it would be giving them a chance to function normally.  All it would be is a chance.  That is something Autistic children do not get much of these days.  It is still vastly misunderstood.

And to all the parents who think their kids are on the spectrum, they make wonderful children even if the road is chocked full of boulders and you stumble all the way down it with them.  Don’t think you did anything wrong.  There was no preventing it from happening.  It has been proven… they are born with the predisposition to Autism.  You are not alone.  You have others like the people behind this latest break through, trying to figure out the actual cause of it, a proper way to treat it, and possibly a way to prevent it soon!