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Feature On Adult Autism To Mark Autism Awareness Day
Feature On Adult Autism To Mark Autism Awareness Day
www.getsurrey.co.uk
FEATURE
Fixing people was easy, but the rest of life was a mystery
When Vaughan Bowen was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome, the debilitating social anxiety which had skewed his life was suddenly explained. Here he explains how, just a few months later, the discovery of a Herald report into his fathers inquest 60 years ago proved just as revelatory
SIXTY years ago on March 5, 1954, the Surrey Herald & News contained a column recording the proceedings of the coroners inquest into my fathers sudden, and unexpected, death by suicide. All the witnesses were taken by surprise. Why? And why did the reporter keep using the word anxiety , yet the coroner indicated that the multiple anxieties were trivial . The factual evidence made no sense. No one understood why he died. I knew nothing of any of this until a year ago when I discovered a sealed envelope that my mother, who passed away in 2007, has left for me. It contained old documents from 1954. Time brings change. The world moves on. Medical science expands with new knowledge. My mother continued to live in Walton. I spent my childhood in boarding school in Hertfordshire. It was a lonely, tough existence. I was always a bit different. Someone once said I was a strange child . I had special interests in geography and flute but trains were my big thing. I excelled at school work but was too uncoordinated for sport. I could run but I did not understand the complexities of team games. I have some invisible difficulties that make it difficult to interact socially and to sometimes appear odd . I have difficulty understanding facial expression, body language and tone of voice. I am poor at starting and ending conversation. I take language very literally and have great difficulty with emotions. I do not know what others are thinking so I sometimes get it all wrong . I have remarkable ability when it comes to non-verbal reasoning, abstract problem solving, special reasoning and visual/motor capabilities. I am well adapted. My special abilities make me ideally suited to orthopaedic surgery. I am funny about textures, sounds and other sensory stimulation. I have to be careful not to get overwhelmed with too much sensory input. This can lead to flooding , which, if allowed to escalate, can have serious consequences. I have lived a double life. Outside observers have seen a great success story. I obtained a medical degree from a good university. I can fly an aircraft. I am a competitive duathlete. People like me and do not realise I am uncomfortable socially. I live in Canada. I find life less complex there and my apparent eccentricities are tolerated and attributed to me being British . Fixing broken people is easy for me. I have had a very successful career. Other aspects of life, however, have been a mystery: unpredictable and difficult to interpret. I had severe depression in my 20s. My wife, an operating room nurse, has looked
Autism Awareness Day: Diagnosed two years ago with Asperger Syndrome Vaughan Bowen then realised the shocking
after me well and been a great mother for our two adopted children. We have moved from one university job to another, apparently climbing the academic ladder but, more likely, attempting to pacify my social anxiety. Anxiety has been my perpetual life partner. A few months before I found my mothers sealed envelope I had a crisis in my life and was evaluated psychologically. I was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome, one of the autism spectrum disorders. My life suddenly made sense. Now I also understood one of my brothers, who also appeared odd . He has it too. Anxiety is a common co-morbidity and a big problem. Did my father have this? Is this the answer to why? Asperger Syndrome was unknown to the English speaking world until 1981. Neither the coroner nor any of the other parties involved would have known about it in 1954. Asperger Syndrome is an invisible neurodevelopmental disorder. The wiring of the brain is different from the majority of the population. Affected people tend to have intense special interests and can have outstanding expertise but they struggle with social interaction. Social difficulties can to be covered up by logical reasoning and experience with life, but the process is time and energy consuming. Anxiety and depression are common co-morbidities. Social gaffs may be forgiven by others but worry the perpetrator. Life is difficult. Did my father have this condition? He is gone and cannot be tested. There is now no one else alive to question. There is, however, a trail of quite strong circumstantial evidence. He had special interests into which he threw himself with all his energy. Two of
Fixing broken people is easy for me: Vaughan Bowen, who has Asperger Syndrome, at work as an orthopaedic surgeon in Canada. his sons have Asperger Syndrome, a condition mostly seen in males and which can be familial. He was bothered by anxiety, emphasised in the 1954 Herald column but described as trivial by the coroner. There is also some evidence that he struggled with social situations and emotional thought, although was successful at covering this up. Flooding is a horrible experience. It can happen suddenly and out of the blue . It may be caused by trivial anxieties that become inappropriately magnified. The brain cannot cope and ceases to function properly. Nowadays, with the autism spectrum disorders being diagnosed in children, flooding is anticipated and managed by time out in a quiet non-stimulating environment. None of this was known in 1954. We will never know for sure but, in my opinion, there is strong circumstantial evidence that my father had Asperger Syndrome and flooding was the cause of his death. To many it may no longer really matter. For those that remember, however, this explanation is important. The fact that there is a likely medical explanation for what happened is vindication for an act considered to be almost unforgivable at the time. What happened was no ones fault. I have found peace in this knowledge. I hope my mother, in her final resting place, has also, at last, been able to discover the truth.
www.getsurrey.co.uk
21
FEATURE
suicide of his father 60 years ago may have been rooted in the disorder now he wants more research into adult diagnosis
Vaughan Bowens father was a priest at St Johns Church and he took his own life in the kitchen there in 1954.