Autism

[Tony Collins]

Just wonder how manyof you feel you may be in the Autistc Scale. Mr Sppok and Lisa Simpson are apparently.

Tony

[Damien Howard]

Neither of them are in the autistic scale.

My brother is autistic, Lisa and Spock are normal.

I on the other hand am anything but normal, but I don't think I am autistic, although I have heard that people with autistic siblings can have varying traces of autism themselves. Don't know how true that is.

[Tim West]

Isn't the "autism spectrum" something on which virtually anyone can be placed?

It seems to me that there are 'fads' of conditions/disabilities whose conditions are so general that a vast proportion of the population can be considered 'on the spectrum'. Examples I can think of are ADD/ADHD and autism on the disability side and RSI on the conditions side. Each of these are valid conditions, but each became "fashionable" for a while and their diagnosis became all-too-common.

I worked in a school that specialised in kids with ADD/ADHD and dyslexia. About 1/3 of the kids had one of those conditions, the others were 'normal' in this regard. My experience there was that any child that was sufficiently disruptive in class was ultimately diagnosed as ADD or ADHD and very often put on medication (Ritalin is/was en vogue). I have no medical qualifications but I knew a lot of these guys well (it was a boarding school; I lived in-school), and to be honest I think a large proportion of them were just young. They didn't want to be in a classroom, they wanted to be running around outside having fun.

My mother works in the disability field and she said similar things about autism. I can't off-hand remember the criteria for being "on the spectrum" but it was pretty minimal.

Anyway, that's my $0.02. The point being that these spectrums (spectra?!) should be considered /very/ critically.

On a side note, does anyone know much about "feminine sexual syndrome" (or something)? I read about that in the paper - it sounds like a drug company has funded research into a 'syndrome' that boiled down to some women not wanting as much sex as their partners. The company had then created a drug that treats this condition. Scary eh?


--Tim

[Frank Silbermann]

Originally posted by Tim West:
Isn't the "autism spectrum" something on which virtually anyone can be placed?

It seems to me that there are 'fads' of conditions/disabilities whose conditions are so general that a vast proportion of the population can be considered 'on the spectrum'.
--Tim

I don't know how wide a net is currently being cast by the "autism spectrum" -- but I've read about Asperger's syndrome (considered to be a mild form of high-functioning autism). Though the people described function far above the classic autism cases, they are indeed psychologically crippled and profoundly weird. And as moderate as their syndromes are in comparison to that of classic autism, my so are my autistic traits mild in comparison to people described as having Asperger's Syndrome -- and yet, these traits have always been for me a significant burden, especially socially.

So I believe the autistic spectrum exists. In fact, one theory for the record high incidence of classic autism in Silicon Valley is the fact that so many hackers with autistic traits are having children there. (I suspect that in earlier, simpler economies, many such people were considered rather useless and rarely reproduced.)
[ July 14, 2004: Message edited by: Frank Silbermann ]