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Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid

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Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid

#351

Post by tboyd47 »

larve wrote: post #341
tboyd47 wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am skeptical that all of those people on Twitter are actually autistic and not just self-diagnosed. Despite having a clinical definition and a defined diagnostic process, autism has become sort of an identity that people celebrate and use in a casual, colloquial way. People have told me that I could have been diagnosed as autistic because of how I act as an adult, but I didn't have developmental delays. I had a pre…

As a self-diagnosed autistic (dodged a diagnosis as a kid, in hindsight quite good seeing how france in the 80ies had some pretty rough approaches to it) that came to that conclusion at age 40, believing for most of my adulthood I wasn't because "look how many friends I have", the reason people seem to "celebrate" it is that it finally gives context to a lifelong suffering and feeling of alienation. It's not like it…

> It's not like it will make your life any easier, since accommodations are scarce to come by, an official diagnosis can come with significant discrimination, and if you made it this far, it doesn't feel like a great way to spend your resources.

These reasons and others are why I do not believe the rise in autism is due to a change in diagnosis. There are very few incentives to getting a diagnosis and so many obstacles. It also doesn't take into account that many autistic children have their diagnosis dropped as adults.

Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid

#352

Post by larve »

tboyd47 wrote: post #351
larve wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a self-diagnosed autistic (dodged a diagnosis as a kid, in hindsight quite good seeing how france in the 80ies had some pretty rough approaches to it) that came to that conclusion at age 40, believing for most of my adulthood I wasn't because "look how many friends I have", the reason people seem to "celebrate" it is that it finally gives context to a lifelong suffering and feeling of alienation. It's not like it…

> It's not like it will make your life any easier, since accommodations are scarce to come by, an official diagnosis can come with significant discrimination, and if you made it this far, it doesn't feel like a great way to spend your resources. These reasons and others are why I do not believe the rise in autism is due to a change in diagnosis. There are very few incentives to getting a diagnosis and so many obstacl…

Diagnosis criteria have definitely gotten broader, and plenty of adults go through with it (I probably will) just to not feel self-conscious about the "self-diagnosis" thing. There is a lot of upsides to framing yourself as autistic, as it makes navigating the world so much easier. These better diagnosis standards, along with better accomodations for autistic people (vs just brutally forcing them to conform) is what made life so much better for my nephew, for example.

Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid

#353

Post by altruios »

hirvi74 wrote: post #214
altruios wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pedantically, I find alcohol use disorder more accurate to my internal definition of condition and disease. What we call things matter: as even slight changes in wording affect how people perceive things - so great care should be use when deciding what vernacular we should adopt generally.

In my mind, an alcoholic is someone that has a dependency on alcohol, but not all people with AUD have a dependency on alcohol. For example, I think binge-drinking consistently (college students on weekends, for example) can be considered to have a mild AUD, but that person is not necessarily an "alcoholic" -- at least not what the average person considers to be an an alcoholic. (If anyone knows more, feel free to co…

It makes sense to have a distinction between the word disease and condition and a disorder.

A disease particular is from a foreign agent: bactierial/fungal/viral/prionic/parasitic.

a condition or disorder is an integral structure on awry, or rewritten (by chemicals or by viewing data) to go awry: the key distinction between this and disease being that there is no other 'lifeform' (yes - include viruses for simplicity's sake).

so alcohol use disorder vs alcoholism reflects a more accurate state of reality. (there is no bacteria/fungus/prion/parasite/virus that is the CAUSE of alcoholism - a chemical rewrote your brain which has been damaged to potentially require alcohol to survive).

the push back I've encountered had nothing to do with being 'correct'/'sensible' and had everything to do with protecting the feelings of people suffering from AUD - which is not a worthwhile goal to coddle people with fluffy medical terms in the aims of removing responsibility from one's self...

... sorry for the rant :)

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