7 ms·

It was time ten years ago. Autism is one of the most complex moving-parts mental disorders that I know of. I'm speaking about kids mainly, because that's what

by jrq 8y ago

It was time ten years ago. Autism is one of the most complex moving-parts mental disorders that I know of. I'm speaking about kids mainly, because that's what I'm familiar with, but some kids have mood swings and some don't, some have cognitive tempo irregularities, some have sensory disruptive effects, some have learning disability effects, some have communication difficulties, some have spatial permanence issues, some have memory issues, there are a million different components to the autism spectrum. The autism spectrum is often thought of as a number line, but it actually exists in several dozen dimensions, it's a very deep spectrum, with documented cases all over it. It gets worse now that there's so much medication flowing around, there are kids who don't have attention disorders getting put on attention meds, kids with normal social skills getting out on psychotic stabilizers. Autism has been affected strongly by how aggressively mobile the psychopharmaceutical industry has become. It's disgusting. It's completely demonic that mental illnesses are graphed and measured and these MEDICINE companies are optimizing for how much orange plastic bottles are being assigned to children! The article is right, DSM did call for it a few years ago, but it will take time and effort to reeducate doctors, the public, the children... It will take time before parents begin to realize the extent to which they are being manipulated and profiteered upon, and the effects of all these drugs in these kids will be profound. I feel strongly about this, but I'm so disenchanted with how America handles big pharma. It's a complete joke. Orange plastic and green paper is worth enough to violate the minds of our youth. Edits: it's my phone keyboard!

kosma 8y ago
Autism is not a mental illness. Please do not spread misinformation.
- fruiet 8y ago
  I don't know why this post has been voted down. Autism most definitely is not a mental illness. It's a disability.
  - xapata 8y ago
    What's the difference? Would you prefer "condition"?
    - iand 8y ago
      The difference is that autism cannot be eliminated via psychiatric methods. It's a neurological condition.
      - jnwatson 8y ago
        Nor can schizophrenia be eliminated via psychiatric methods.
      - xapata 8y ago
        I think many aspects of a mind cannot be eliminated by psychiatric methods, yet most we would simply call personality.
    - loceng 8y ago
      Developmental disorder is more widely used, and more correct.
- ythn 8y ago
  Its a general term people use to mean "not normal". What else should we call it? Everyone loves to play semantics and politics when it comes to categorising mental abnormalities. No one wants their affliction to be considered an "illness"
  - colomon 8y ago
    Basically you're unleashing a horde of loaded words in an effort to explain why the first loaded word choice was appropriate. For a significant portion of those with autism, the way their brain works is different than the median human but they are still basically fully functional human beings. My handy dictionary defines abnormal as "deviating from what is normal or usual, typically in a way that is undesirable or worrying." They match the first part of the definition, but the second part is very much open to question. Being different is not necessarily undesirable, nor worrying, nor an affliction, nor an illness.
    - mannykannot 8y ago
      This response, describing autism as being merely different, is exactly why the single diagnostic label was a mistake, and should be immediately reversed. I know an autistic person whose ability to use language is so impaired that only his parents and siblings can communicate in any meaningful way with him. Effective use of language is a signature feature of being human, and to dismiss an inability to do so as being merely 'different' is a cruel dismissal of some very serious problems that have come to define the life of this family - most of all, of course, for the victim himself (and yes, he is a victim of circumstance.)
    - jklinger410 8y ago
      People like you are one of the biggest reasons autism is too broad of a term. Maybe these words seem loaded to self-diagnosed, asperger glorifying, "neurodivergent," ever-woke social justice armchair linguists like yourself. I'd love for all of you to be squarely outside of the same diagnosis my little brother has. I can't stress how much your "fully functioning" "open to question" "non-illness difference" version of autism deeply offends those who have been touched by real autism. Not, got me a job at Google savante autism. Not, I'm a nerd who remembers every episode of Naruto and no one likes me because I never shower so my excuse is my neurodivergence autism. I long for the day when my brother's socially crippling mood swings and severe learning disability is no longer trapped under the same umbrella as a group of people who want to remove disability, retardation, or illness from a definition that has literally destroyed the lives of many individuals and families across the world. I am disgusted by this optimistic view on autism. Championed by the most privileged of those with the disorder. You all fight a "stigma" for a mental disorder that you find has some "perks" as if the child thrashing his head against a wall and screaming at the top of his lungs because his brain registers every other sensation as pain and pain as pleasure doesn't even exist. I have no sympathy for your entire assessment yet we agree on one thing, me maybe more so than you. The sooner we redefine autism into a multitude of different mental disorders, the better.
- scardine 8y ago
  I can understand why high-functional individuals or even the parents dealing with moderate cases are afraid of the stigma but the whole "it is not a desease" is very harmful for families dealing with more severe cases: it is always taxing for the family and often very debilitating for the individual. My 5 yers old son wouldn't be able to attend a regular school without 3 years of expensive therapy and a dedicated tutor in class so the last thing I want is an excuse for my health insurance to deny assistance. The safety network a lot worse than what is available for dawn's without this PC BS.
  - astura 8y ago
    The person you are replying to didn't say autism isn't a disease; they said it's not a mental illness. As far as I know autism is classified as a developmental disorder.
    - CydeWeys 8y ago
      There's not much of a useful distinction between these categories and words, though. "Disease" is a very general category that, depending on who you ask, contains all disorders. Many psychiatric developmental disorders do have clear established physical causes, so in that sense they're not much different than being born with a malformed heart, other than that the defect is in a different location. The only real consensus is that "disease" does not describe traumatic injuries, e.g. if you break your ankle in a bike accident that isn't a disease. Note that many people conflate "disease" with "infectious disease", but the actual general category "disease" is quite broad and encompasses much more. Anyway, it's arguing over semantics, like the perennial argument over whether Java parameters are passed by reference, or if their references are passed by value, or if they're passed by value, etc. See here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16896150 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16896150
- dang 8y ago
  Please don't post shallow dismissals. A good critical comment teaches us something. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
seattle_spring 8y ago
> autism spectrum js These js frameworks are getting weirder by the day.
- jrq 8y ago
  I have one of those """smart" "" keyboards on my phone It even fucked that up
loceng 8y ago
I'm curious what your background and experience is to classify the Autism spectrum as a mental disorder? I believe a better classification would be a developmental disorder - which I personally prefer to state as developmental blocks, which makes the spectrum of symptoms/behaviours and sets of behaviours as symptoms become easier to understand; and depending on when (and perhaps how) the developmental block started, will in part dictate where along natural evolution and brain development they are. Pharma of course wants to classify it as a mental disorder so then doctors will be allowed to prescribe medications. I'm curious too what you mean by several dozen dimensions? I wonder if you mean the same thing as I do when I say "set of behaviours?" And yes, the industrial complex with pharma has learned how to indoctrinate the medical and educational system, and fine-tuned their marketing/advertising. I get sick to my stomach when I go to the US and put TV on, the constant flood of ads for medications that are all fluff information being presented.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- jrq 8y ago
  I didn't diagnose anything. Don't take my personal opinion and make it accountable to a professional one. I'm not a doctor. But before doing finance I used to do some basic tutoring and teachers assistant stuff for a place filled with kids with "autism" and there was a very wide array of personalities there. As per dimensionality, yes that's what I was saying. Each symptom or descriptor exists on its own spectrum, not the entire disorder/illness/whatever it is medically classified. Anyways, yeah. I don't know what's an illness, what's a disorder, I don't particularly care what the medical industry uses to distinguish those two words, but I've spent a chunk of time working with autistic students, and its close to my heart.
  - loceng 8y ago
    The wide array of personalities is why it's considered a spectrum - so either saying autism or autism spectrum is referencing the same thing. There are certainly severities of what behaviours and the level that they will present - they all fit within an evolving framework and understanding of autism though. Things can be difficult to diagnose, primarily because there can be multiple causes of symptoms. Someone with anxiety might be eating a food that makes them anxious, or they have unhealed PTS, etc. A problem with taking the pharma approach to treatment of someone with autism is that, imaging being super hypersensitive to touch - the constant agitation from contact by clothing may make you constantly anxious right? So do you treat anxiety as a symptom of the sensitivity? It doesn't really make sense to do.
kemiller2002 8y ago
It doesn't help that assistance in schools is based on kids getting certain diagnoses (at least where I live in the U.S.), Autism being on of them. This means that a number of kids either have other disorders or really none at all are labeled with this because it's a way of working the system. To make matters worse, I've had arguments with teachers about what constitutes being Autistic. My son was diagnosed with Autism when he was 3/4, and with therapy he's doing quite well, but he has his quirks. I have to remind people that just because he doesn't act the way their other children did who were diagnosed in the classroom, doesn't mean that he isn't on the spectrum, and I remind that they aren't qualified to officially determine his mental health. (And if they are, then we're going to have another discussion about performing a medical procedure on a child without the consent of their parent.)
- anewhnaccount2 8y ago
  Diagnoses for conditions without a known causal mechanism should be thought of as much as a reflection on the social and institutional context as on the diagnosed person. It's only fair since it's the society and institution that needed the label in order to accommodate the diagnosed person in the first place.
  - WoodenChair 8y ago
    I agree if the people doing the labeling are qualified to do as much. I think OP is saying some of these teachers are not.
fjsolwmv 8y ago
There are no drugs for autism, so I don't understand your comment.
- joejerryronnie 8y ago
  There are drugs that have been shown to improve specific symptoms that can manifest with ASD. These drugs are not always effective but can be part of a wholistic support program (including therapy, school district support, and lifestyle changes). Any of these drugs should only be administered under the careful supervision of a psychiatrist.
  - ShabbosGoy 8y ago
    I wonder what role inhibitory control plays in the behaviors of ASD. Is it that an autistic person is unable to control their irregular behavior, or is it simply that their perception of the world is different than most neurotypical people?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
makomk 8y ago
The complexity and the number of dimensions is exactly why the APA decided to delete AS as a diagnosis and create a single diagnostic label. Do you know why, out of all the many dimensional, we ended up categorizing based on the one specific aspect? Basically, it's because it determined what triggered the initial referral - it was an artifact of how our health system is set up, not anything actually intrinsic to the condition itself. It's not even clear what an actually-meaningful diagnostic classification would look like.

by jrq 8y ago

kosma 8y ago

Autism is not a mental illness. Please do not spread misinformation.

fruiet 8y ago
I don't know why this post has been voted down. Autism most definitely is not a mental illness. It's a disability.
- xapata 8y ago
  What's the difference? Would you prefer "condition"?
  - iand 8y ago
    The difference is that autism cannot be eliminated via psychiatric methods. It's a neurological condition.
    - jnwatson 8y ago
      Nor can schizophrenia be eliminated via psychiatric methods.
    - xapata 8y ago
      I think many aspects of a mind cannot be eliminated by psychiatric methods, yet most we would simply call personality.
  - loceng 8y ago
    Developmental disorder is more widely used, and more correct.
ythn 8y ago
Its a general term people use to mean "not normal". What else should we call it? Everyone loves to play semantics and politics when it comes to categorising mental abnormalities. No one wants their affliction to be considered an "illness"
- colomon 8y ago
  Basically you're unleashing a horde of loaded words in an effort to explain why the first loaded word choice was appropriate. For a significant portion of those with autism, the way their brain works is different than the median human but they are still basically fully functional human beings. My handy dictionary defines abnormal as "deviating from what is normal or usual, typically in a way that is undesirable or worrying." They match the first part of the definition, but the second part is very much open to question. Being different is not necessarily undesirable, nor worrying, nor an affliction, nor an illness.
  - mannykannot 8y ago
    This response, describing autism as being merely different, is exactly why the single diagnostic label was a mistake, and should be immediately reversed. I know an autistic person whose ability to use language is so impaired that only his parents and siblings can communicate in any meaningful way with him. Effective use of language is a signature feature of being human, and to dismiss an inability to do so as being merely 'different' is a cruel dismissal of some very serious problems that have come to define the life of this family - most of all, of course, for the victim himself (and yes, he is a victim of circumstance.)
  - jklinger410 8y ago
    People like you are one of the biggest reasons autism is too broad of a term. Maybe these words seem loaded to self-diagnosed, asperger glorifying, "neurodivergent," ever-woke social justice armchair linguists like yourself. I'd love for all of you to be squarely outside of the same diagnosis my little brother has. I can't stress how much your "fully functioning" "open to question" "non-illness difference" version of autism deeply offends those who have been touched by real autism. Not, got me a job at Google savante autism. Not, I'm a nerd who remembers every episode of Naruto and no one likes me because I never shower so my excuse is my neurodivergence autism. I long for the day when my brother's socially crippling mood swings and severe learning disability is no longer trapped under the same umbrella as a group of people who want to remove disability, retardation, or illness from a definition that has literally destroyed the lives of many individuals and families across the world. I am disgusted by this optimistic view on autism. Championed by the most privileged of those with the disorder. You all fight a "stigma" for a mental disorder that you find has some "perks" as if the child thrashing his head against a wall and screaming at the top of his lungs because his brain registers every other sensation as pain and pain as pleasure doesn't even exist. I have no sympathy for your entire assessment yet we agree on one thing, me maybe more so than you. The sooner we redefine autism into a multitude of different mental disorders, the better.
scardine 8y ago
I can understand why high-functional individuals or even the parents dealing with moderate cases are afraid of the stigma but the whole "it is not a desease" is very harmful for families dealing with more severe cases: it is always taxing for the family and often very debilitating for the individual. My 5 yers old son wouldn't be able to attend a regular school without 3 years of expensive therapy and a dedicated tutor in class so the last thing I want is an excuse for my health insurance to deny assistance. The safety network a lot worse than what is available for dawn's without this PC BS.
- astura 8y ago
  The person you are replying to didn't say autism isn't a disease; they said it's not a mental illness. As far as I know autism is classified as a developmental disorder.
  - CydeWeys 8y ago
    There's not much of a useful distinction between these categories and words, though. "Disease" is a very general category that, depending on who you ask, contains all disorders. Many psychiatric developmental disorders do have clear established physical causes, so in that sense they're not much different than being born with a malformed heart, other than that the defect is in a different location. The only real consensus is that "disease" does not describe traumatic injuries, e.g. if you break your ankle in a bike accident that isn't a disease. Note that many people conflate "disease" with "infectious disease", but the actual general category "disease" is quite broad and encompasses much more. Anyway, it's arguing over semantics, like the perennial argument over whether Java parameters are passed by reference, or if their references are passed by value, or if they're passed by value, etc. See here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16896150 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16896150
dang 8y ago
Please don't post shallow dismissals. A good critical comment teaches us something. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

seattle_spring 8y ago

> autism spectrum js These js frameworks are getting weirder by the day.

jrq 8y ago
I have one of those """smart" "" keyboards on my phone It even fucked that up

loceng 8y ago

I'm curious what your background and experience is to classify the Autism spectrum as a mental disorder? I believe a better classification would be a developmental disorder - which I personally prefer to state as developmental blocks, which makes the spectrum of symptoms/behaviours and sets of behaviours as symptoms become easier to understand; and depending on when (and perhaps how) the developmental block started, will in part dictate where along natural evolution and brain development they are. Pharma of course wants to classify it as a mental disorder so then doctors will be allowed to prescribe medications. I'm curious too what you mean by several dozen dimensions? I wonder if you mean the same thing as I do when I say "set of behaviours?" And yes, the industrial complex with pharma has learned how to indoctrinate the medical and educational system, and fine-tuned their marketing/advertising. I get sick to my stomach when I go to the US and put TV on, the constant flood of ads for medications that are all fluff information being presented.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
jrq 8y ago
I didn't diagnose anything. Don't take my personal opinion and make it accountable to a professional one. I'm not a doctor. But before doing finance I used to do some basic tutoring and teachers assistant stuff for a place filled with kids with "autism" and there was a very wide array of personalities there. As per dimensionality, yes that's what I was saying. Each symptom or descriptor exists on its own spectrum, not the entire disorder/illness/whatever it is medically classified. Anyways, yeah. I don't know what's an illness, what's a disorder, I don't particularly care what the medical industry uses to distinguish those two words, but I've spent a chunk of time working with autistic students, and its close to my heart.
- loceng 8y ago
  The wide array of personalities is why it's considered a spectrum - so either saying autism or autism spectrum is referencing the same thing. There are certainly severities of what behaviours and the level that they will present - they all fit within an evolving framework and understanding of autism though. Things can be difficult to diagnose, primarily because there can be multiple causes of symptoms. Someone with anxiety might be eating a food that makes them anxious, or they have unhealed PTS, etc. A problem with taking the pharma approach to treatment of someone with autism is that, imaging being super hypersensitive to touch - the constant agitation from contact by clothing may make you constantly anxious right? So do you treat anxiety as a symptom of the sensitivity? It doesn't really make sense to do.

kemiller2002 8y ago

It doesn't help that assistance in schools is based on kids getting certain diagnoses (at least where I live in the U.S.), Autism being on of them. This means that a number of kids either have other disorders or really none at all are labeled with this because it's a way of working the system. To make matters worse, I've had arguments with teachers about what constitutes being Autistic. My son was diagnosed with Autism when he was 3/4, and with therapy he's doing quite well, but he has his quirks. I have to remind people that just because he doesn't act the way their other children did who were diagnosed in the classroom, doesn't mean that he isn't on the spectrum, and I remind that they aren't qualified to officially determine his mental health. (And if they are, then we're going to have another discussion about performing a medical procedure on a child without the consent of their parent.)

anewhnaccount2 8y ago
Diagnoses for conditions without a known causal mechanism should be thought of as much as a reflection on the social and institutional context as on the diagnosed person. It's only fair since it's the society and institution that needed the label in order to accommodate the diagnosed person in the first place.
- WoodenChair 8y ago
  I agree if the people doing the labeling are qualified to do as much. I think OP is saying some of these teachers are not.

fjsolwmv 8y ago

There are no drugs for autism, so I don't understand your comment.

joejerryronnie 8y ago
There are drugs that have been shown to improve specific symptoms that can manifest with ASD. These drugs are not always effective but can be part of a wholistic support program (including therapy, school district support, and lifestyle changes). Any of these drugs should only be administered under the careful supervision of a psychiatrist.
- ShabbosGoy 8y ago
  I wonder what role inhibitory control plays in the behaviors of ASD. Is it that an autistic person is unable to control their irregular behavior, or is it simply that their perception of the world is different than most neurotypical people?

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

makomk 8y ago

The complexity and the number of dimensions is exactly why the APA decided to delete AS as a diagnosis and create a single diagnostic label. Do you know why, out of all the many dimensional, we ended up categorizing based on the one specific aspect? Basically, it's because it determined what triggered the initial referral - it was an artifact of how our health system is set up, not anything actually intrinsic to the condition itself. It's not even clear what an actually-meaningful diagnostic classification would look like.