colleague might have aspergers... help

hello.

as i am new here i apoloize for any mistakes i may do ib my first post... but it is urgent.

I have a colleague who recently came back to Europe after several years in Overseas.
She still has two frieds there and she desperately tries to stay in touch with them.

Her social skills are very low, she withdraws from colleagues, takes every odd joke and teasing literally, avoids eye contact, has her frequent break downs.

I researched a lot and think she might be a (high?) functional aspie... but i am not a professional.

in Europe from what i know she was unemployed, had few odd jobs and episodes of homelessness. No family support whatsoever, apparently dysfuctional and poverty.

She ended up with a job in Portugal for now.
There is no support for adult aspies here and diagnostics are only available for children.

I found few options in UK but she does not have health insurance and no job there. Waiting times are long to get appointments for diagnostics and i wonder if she can find a decent job there and keep it long enough.

she said that her friends in oversea still try to help. So i wonder what I could/should do in order to help my colleague.
I am tempted to contact them as they know her better to ask if she could be a functional asperger. Also there are several facilities diagnosing adults so this could probably be an option for her.
They may have no clue and just getting annoyed when she calls them and begs for help as she apparently trusts them while having no clue why she just does not fit in.

Her contract with our employer will end in a few weeks. Not sure if she gets renewed. And I am afraid to lose contact without knowing if someone else will try to help and i am afraid she might end up homeless again.

what can i do to help her..
feedback would be much appreciated.

the short answer is very little, except acquainting her of your suspicion and hoping that this might enable her to do something about it herself. it was a work colleague that told me that their spouse suspected i might have AS.

Hi shock the monkey.

Thanks for your answer.
i am not sure but i dont like what she said when i mentioned that i think she might have aspergers.

she said she thinks about that for a while but who cares. i said i do care and she said it is hopeless as adult her age without any family support, without health insurance to even try to get help.

she got a valid point there as here in europe help for adults on the asperger spectrum is very limited to say it politely unless you are rich and could pay private.
she showed me the mails she sent to numerous support groups and apparently never got an answer.

She said if i want i could contact her friends but that she wont do as they may think she would just use that to put pressure on them and she is afraid she wont get an answer at all and lose them completelyshe said she does not care anymore as she does not know whom to trust anymore.

i contacted some support groups as well but no answer.
i even contacted some clinics in her home country. only two answered and the said unless she has health insurance there is nothing they can do if she is not able to cover the costs on her own. At least thats what i understood.

i wonder how she deals with it.... just to think about her situation makes me cry.

so having her permission.... i am not sure if i shoiluld reach out to her friends who dont know me and of whom she apparently thinks they dont care anymore because she made to many mistakes and they are mad.
on the other hand if they do not know she might have asperger but wonder how they could help?

sorry for the long text.

there is one point here that is quite obvious. knowledge is power. if she knows that she has AS, she can read up on the subject, seek out self-help groups and, most obviously, join discussion websites like this on. there are a couple of well known AS websites that spring to mind.

personally, i don't think it's your place to act as an advocate between her and her other friends. i think to do so is potentially invasive of the privacy of those other friends, and i think it's putting too much responsibility on you to manage her problems for her. i just wouldn't do it.