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It all made sense when we found out we were autistic

bbc.co.uk

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Re: It all made sense when we found out we were autistic

#201

Post by gowld »

TomK32 wrote: post #122
gowld wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very easy to diagnose someone with extreme autism, just as it's easy to diagnose someone with extreme dwarfism. It's blurrier when you get to mild autism (and mild shortness) where there is less visible impairment, less obvious behavior, and often visible benefits.

I'm 1.93 and my knees make trouble. can you give me a diagnosis? :D I'm reading a book at the moment, in german, "Ich liebe einen Asperger" and even proper autism was barely recognized by people working with kids 15yrs ago: "... but it couldn't be Autism!?" is one quote from an educator about the family's most autistic child. Things probably haven't changed that much. One other thing, even though it is exhausting, ki…

"try to mimic others, act normal" is mild-to-moderate autism, and leads to challenges like not realizing that it's so much harder (in mental effort) for one person to perform behaviors that are so easy for most people.

Severe autism has symptoms like nonverbality (unless treated with years of intensive communication therapy), extreme repetitive behaviors (tapping, bouncing, etc), and freakouts/meltdowns in response to unexpected situations and sensory inputs, of the sort of intensity and sensitivity well beyond what you'd see in the average person over the age of about 7years.

In years past people might not have been able to pinpoint "autism", but disregarding the minor important of the label, it was still easy to see a lot of what was going on with the person with the condition. (Effective _treatment_ is of course much harder than mere diagnosis.)

Re: It all made sense when we found out we were autistic

#202

Post by gowld »

mercer wrote: post #31
gowld wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Autism" is simply a label for a certain basket of personality characteristics that tend to occur together. It's scientifically interesting but not very relevant to daily life -- especially on the milder end where there's less predictive power (in more severe autism, seeing one symptom makes it likely that you'll see other symptoms, so you can correctly plan to encounter them). The label itself doesn't provide more m…

At least over here, one of the requirements for diagnosis is that it impacts your life negatively enough to benefit from being labeled and receiving treatment. What makes you think this is not the case?

My point is that the individual symptoms -- such behavioral rigidity and slow processing of sensory inputs -- can be treated appropriately (accommodations and therapy) without regard for whether they are "autism". It's not like "arm pain" -> "x-ray shows broken bone" -> "put a cast on it"

Re: It all made sense when we found out we were autistic

#203

Post by 205guy »

jeandejean wrote: post #145

"Five times as many males as females are diagnosed", but the problem is of course that women are not diagnosed enough... What about there is a big problem in our society that make males more prone to autism that we should fix first? That article seems to be political rather than informative to me.

I think the point of articles like this one is to raise the question of whether autism as it is currently diagnosed in young children is actually only diagnosing "male-pattern autism." By looking at adult female cases, where the subject is able to reflect on their childhood and their late diagnosis, we might be able to formulate better screening for children so that the ratio isn't as skewed.

Re: It all made sense when we found out we were autistic

#204

Post by AstralStorm »

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #189
_b2lj wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm Autistic. Diagnosed at the age of 16 with moderate-severe Asperger's in 2001. I struggled all throughout middle-school high-school and even some college to understand other people and to make friends. Middle school was the worst, because I was endlessly bullied, very depressed, extremely lonely, and constantly told that I was "weird". Before my diagnosis I remember breaking down in my school's counselors office b…

I'm shocked that nobody commented on the horrible way you've been treated: misdiagnosis, bullying, being labeled "weird" and given poor advice even by your own teachers, being experimented on and then even incarcerated. Why are people accepting this events so lightheartedly?

Because kids are horrible and there is no way to fix this. Anything short of Orwellian surveillance and super fast responsiveness that is - or segregation which is wrong for other reasons. Or reducing class sizes to less than 5 kids each and keeping an edge directly on them even during breaks. Unworkable for theoretically economic reasons.

Teachers are not really equipped to deal with it either.

Re: It all made sense when we found out we were autistic

#205

Post by AstralStorm »

goldenkey wrote: post #132
TomK32 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the Autism rights movement link (here I am, an old-fashioned wikipedian of 15 years and still finding new articles). I though Autism/Asperger has some genetic backing? At least the wikipedia article I link below has quite a list of candidate gene loci. Here's a quote from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_autism > Autism concordance in siblings and fraternal twins is anywhere between 0 and 23.5…

We know many cases are genetic but don't have a definitive genetic test. Heritibility is not hard to determine even if no specific genes are known. Mendel did this with plants even before chromosomes were discovered. So we can say simple things like the odds of offspring having autism - which isn't based on a specific gene but rather the dominance/recessiveness of the underlying genetic factors computed by census/sur…

The percentages are confounded by the environment both social and physical fostered by parents. And we don't have enough separated twin studies...

Re: It all made sense when we found out we were autistic

#206

Post by goldenkey »

AstralStorm wrote: post #205
goldenkey wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We know many cases are genetic but don't have a definitive genetic test. Heritibility is not hard to determine even if no specific genes are known. Mendel did this with plants even before chromosomes were discovered. So we can say simple things like the odds of offspring having autism - which isn't based on a specific gene but rather the dominance/recessiveness of the underlying genetic factors computed by census/sur…

The percentages are confounded by the environment both social and physical fostered by parents. And we don't have enough separated twin studies...

You're right. I was just trying to tell OP that the heritibility evidence we have is not from knowing the exact genes that cause autism. It is moreso from epidemiological stats.

Re: It all made sense when we found out we were autistic

#207

Post by eeZah7Ux »

AstralStorm wrote: post #204
eeZah7Ux wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm shocked that nobody commented on the horrible way you've been treated: misdiagnosis, bullying, being labeled "weird" and given poor advice even by your own teachers, being experimented on and then even incarcerated. Why are people accepting this events so lightheartedly?

Because kids are horrible and there is no way to fix this. Anything short of Orwellian surveillance and super fast responsiveness that is - or segregation which is wrong for other reasons. Or reducing class sizes to less than 5 kids each and keeping an edge directly on them even during breaks. Unworkable for theoretically economic reasons. Teachers are not really equipped to deal with it either.

Out of 6 forms of abuse I mentioned five were carried on by adults.
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