Educational Resources

James is a seventeen year old boy diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. He is in year twelve and attends a school of distance education that utilises an alternative curriculum that is based around workbooks and short informal tests or quizzes to assess learning. James is very intelligent and performs highly on all assessment tasks. He has a high level of knowledge about computers and spends many hours every day using them. 

 

James experiences extreme difficulty with leaving the house. The anxiety that this provokes often results in panic attacks or high levels of stress. Due to this, he is currently attending a School of Distance Education.  He has been diagnosed with social anxiety, along with depression and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Although he has medication for these disorders, they still have a large effect on the way he lives his life. James feels most comfortable at home with immediate family members.

 

He has a small group of friends that he speaks to through a computer program, but doesn’t speak to outside of this due to their geographical locations. He has regular contact with these friends and although he doesn’t often leave the house, he still has regular social interaction with these people and his immediate family. However, James has high levels of stress when interacting with individuals outside of his immediate family and group of friends.

 

When James did attend school, he had high levels of anxiety due to the unpredictable nature of the school environment, along with the changing routine, different teachers for each subject and the different peers that are in each class. In primary school he had extensive teacher aide assistance which helped to alleviate this stress, however in the high school setting this assistance was minimal which added greatly to his stress.

 

James is a very caring individual who takes great pains to ensure that those around him are happy, and will spend hours assisting someone if he can provide assistance. He has a good ability to recognise and sometimes react to the feelings of others, due to extensive intervention when he was younger.