▲ | CalRobert 15 hours ago | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
The redefinition of "autism" from "can't talk, stims constantly, maybe bangs head against the wall, serious danger to themselves" to "kinda awkward savant" seems like it has been profoundly harmful to people who want to find new therapies for those in the former group. Maybe normalizing it was a way for insurance companies and school districts to get out of funding appropriate measures for people who literally can not function in day to day life. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
▲ | chneu 14 hours ago | parent | next [-] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Autism wasn't redefined like that. Not by the medical community. Social media took hold and it became the new OCD. People think liking straight lines on their desk means they have OCD. Same with autism, people think not liking a loud noise is autism. I think a lot of people confuse neurodivergent with autistic as well. The whole field needs a reorganization anyway. I've talked to dozens of therapists about this and I've received wildly different answers on what autism even is. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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▲ | mvieira38 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
It hasn't been redefined at all, you just weren't aware of all the intricacies and conflated every possible symptom into one large, uncommon stereotype, while in reality people in the spectrum are more common than you think but show some symptoms more than others and some not at all. John, 38 yo virgin, spending 50% of his income on Gundam figurines while living with his aging mother and having no IRL friends is supposedly not "autistic enough" for you if he can hold a job, walk and talk normally? What about that one girl you went to high school with who couldn't stop talking about Supernatural and had a full-on meltdown in front of the whole class on more than one occasion, to the point where she had no friends by junior year and got severely depressed? These characters were seen as "just weird" until actual scientists started figuring out they were autistic, and now they might have a better life with treatment and the necessary disability benefits | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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▲ | pjc50 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
I think there's a wider band of children than you think who can end up in either of those two camps depending on how they are treated, with traditional bullying pushing them to the former. |