Reader’s Question

What is the clinical relationships between Asperger’s Syndrome and Photophobia? I have seen on a couple of websites that Asperger’s can be a cause of Photophobia, but the sites are a bit iffy on a direct link. I have Asperger’s myself and I also have Photophobia. I’m just wondering if there’s any clinical correlation, or link, or if I just happen to have both.

Our Clinical Psychologist’s Reply

Sometimes, official diagnostic categories and labels don’t adequately capture or describe the difficulties people can experience. Photophobia literally means “fear of light.” Individuals can have or develop irrational fears for a variety of reasons. Sometimes, the fear is “conditioned” in them because of some past experience that associated light with some negative or painful event. Persons tend to avoid the stress-producing situations they fear, making it hard for them to overcome the fear.

Individuals who struggle with one of the developmental spectrum disorders (e.g., Autism, Atypical Autism, Rhett’s Disorder, Asperger’s Syndrome, etc.) often experience difficulty processing and integrating sensory information (e.g., visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, etc.). Because they have difficulty processing such information and modulating their responses, they sometimes under-respond to a certain sensory stimulus, or are overly sensitive and over-react to its presence. Such sensory integration dysfunction (SID) is also known by several other labels including Sensory Processing Disorder, Sensory Modulation Dysfunction, or Sensory Overload Disorder. Because it’s not a critical, formal diagnostic criterion for Asperger’s Disorder, many times clinicians give a secondary diagnosis (like one of the aforementioned labels) to address the person’s sensory processing dysfunction.

It’s possible for a person who has Asperger’s Disorder to have no difficulties with sensory processing but to have a phobia of one type or another, including a fear of light. It’s also possible for a person with Asperger’s to have no phobias or sensory processing problems. However, it’s more common for individuals with any developmental disorder to have some sort of sensory processing difficulty. The key to understanding what the underlying reason for a person’s adverse reaction to light might be would be to determine whether the response has more to do with a learned fear per se or whether it is an over-reaction to the presence of the visual stimulus. The ideal modes for treatment would be different in each case. The ideal treatment for a true phobia is exposure. But direct exposure, especially dramatic or intense exposure (a valid phobia reduction technique) might easily be overwhelming for a person who cannot adequately process the sensory information. For individuals who struggle with processing sensory information, there are specialized sensory integration therapies available that help a person increase their tolerance and integration capacity for various forms of sensory stimuli.