Bio

Dr. Luallin received her PhD in School Psychology from the University of Northern Colorado in 2020. She completed her doctoral fellowship at Indiana University’s Riley Hospital’s autism clinic and fell in love with Indianapolis, where she lives with her husband and 3 cats. Her clinical and research pursuits started early in her career and include autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and other neurodevelopmental disorders, and she has been working with this population and their families for over 10 years. She has worked at Denver Children’s Hospital’s neuropsychiatric specialty unit which focuses on children with autism, in a private practice in Denver specializing in adults and females with ASD, and has now been with lighthouse autism center for 3 years. Publications include: “ Gender Differences in Emotion Dysregulation in an Autism Inpatient Psychiatric Sample”, “Standardized administration of the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, Second Edition across treatment settings”, and “Autism Spectrum Disorder Testing: What Parents Need to Know.” 

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Abstract

For Individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), 55-85% have an accompanying psychiatric diagnosis (Hossain, et al., 2020) with anxiety, ADHD, and depressive disorders being the most common. Autistic individuals are also more likely
to have comorbid somatic difficulties such as epilepsy or seizure disorders, sleep disturbance, GI disorders, and sight/hearing impairments (Lai, et al., 2019). These co-occurring difficulties and diagnoses can make diagnosing and treating ASD difficult because
they can exacerbate or mitigate typical symptoms of ASD. This can cause misdiagnosis, delays in diagnosis, inadequate symptom treatment, and/or difficulties in treatment. As such, it is important for stakeholders to understand dual diagnoses in order to raise
awareness, identify diagnoses sooner, and manage symptoms optimally in treatment. The following presentation will focus on core symptoms of ASD, common comorbid diagnoses and their symptoms, treatments for the accompanying diagnosis, and the importance of
differentiating diagnoses. 

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Objectives​​

​Participants will be: 

1. Able to identify symptoms of ASD

2. Able to identify symptoms of ADHD

3. Distinguish between symptoms of ASD and symptoms seen in diagnoses commonly co-occurring with ASD