Autism as a "convenient" diagnosis? - Page 11

On September 17 2011 07:40 dapanman wrote:
I once had a lawyer mutter to me under her breath during a hearing with school district officials, "I could get a turnip diagnosed with autism."

On September 17 2011 07:37 dcemuser wrote:


That's why Asperger's is defined as "high-functioning autism". Many (most) people with Asperger's live normal lives, they just appear to be a little odd.

"low-functioning autism" are the type you are calling "real autism".


Autism at its core is a social impairment, so all degrees of social impairment have to be covered by it. Whether you don't make eye contact well or you can barely talk and when you do you stutter every word and can't pronounce half the words right and hold your hands at odd angles, you're autistic either way.

Autism has this stigma with it that you have to be a drooling retard slurring every word and walking with your hands at odd angles to be autistic. That really isn't true.



Exactly. If you have autism you aren't sick, and most medications won't do shit to help you. It's not like they're trying to sell you drugs or anything.

They're just trying to identify children for special programs that TEACH children how to act (because autistic children don't understand interaction without teaching usually whereas other children know it instinctively).

On September 17 2011 07:49 hotwings wrote:
Whether you have autism or just plain awkward. WE MUST STICK TOGETHER.

AWKWARD PEOPLE HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

On September 17 2011 07:25 lowercase wrote:
Autism is modern psychology's schizophrenia. Look at all the medical literature in the late 1800s and early 1900s, people were obsessed with schizophrenia, calling it the "mental plague of the modern world." It slowly went out of fashion to be doing research with it, and it was relegated to the back shelves of science. Nowadays we have autism, a "syndrome" that exists in the gaps of our knowledge regarding the inner workings of the human mind. It's as fashionable as schizophrenia ever was, and just as inane, other than functioning as scientific fodder for the production of PhD dissertations.

On September 17 2011 02:17 forgottendreams wrote:
I have mild autism, I find it extremely hard to look into peoples eyes and randomly zone into social awkwardness without warning that leaves an entire room quiet. No matter how long I've tried to correct the problems it won't fix itself even after years of attempting to look people straight in the eye it always feels strange.

I also focus on things overly so, some years I'm obsessed with different things like say philosophers where I read everyone from Hegel to Marx to Freud to Nietchze by the time I was 15. At 17 I was reading chess every single day and knew Bobby Fischer's 10 or so opening to mid lines for black and white by heart within a week. The obsessions were almost grit my teeth obsessive, like seriously strange and intense beyond words. This left me otherworldly with my peers until college where although I was still ahead literacy wise at least I could meet some challenges.

I believe autism exists on varied levels and that mild autism really does exist. I've never been able to rid myself after years of practice of being able to execute basic social skills and trying to calm myself down from over-reading or over-obsessing about certain things. To say I view as a disadvantage is laughable, socially I may lack but my friends refer to me today as "the prophet" or "the advisor" because of my intellectual skills although when I was young I was viewed as a strange and lone wolf.

On September 17 2011 08:38 Hittomogasin wrote:


Whitch is remarkable. It has ushered people like Einstein and Newton into unimaginable brilliance.

On September 17 2011 10:46 Sablar wrote:
W

What? Schizophrenia is probably the most validated diagnosis. The strong heredity and the severity of psychosis makes it pretty obvious.

edit. and of course the people previously mentioned weren't afflicted.