> My friends in psychiatry are at their wits end with all of the people coming in and demanding Autism diagnoses

Why would you want, much less demand, to be diagnosed with any particular disorder? Is there such a thing as being fashionably disordered?

I think that if I felt something was wrong with me, I would want to be accurately diagnosed, not fashionably diagnosed.

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DavidPiper 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Is there such a thing as being fashionably disordered?

Anecdotally, absolutely yes. Based on what the Instagram and YouTube feeds have sent me over the last couple of years, ADHD in particular (Autism less so, but as the parent notes, "AuDHD" is becoming very popular) is totally glamourised at this point, much to the detriment of people who actually have to manage ADHD and Autism, I assume.

There is an enormous amount of monetised content around it.

	▲	PaulHoule 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The ADHD culture is particularly dangerous because it is a license to get dangerous addictive drugs that frequently get diverted. Used as directed people don't have trouble in the short term but I know a lot of 50-somethings who were in school districts that were early adopters of the ADHD construct and a lot of them are in terrible shape. When people save up a week worth of meds and take them at once they often wind up in the psych ward. When you see the drugged out people who drive people out of cities into the suburbs or give you another reason to order a private taxi for your burrito [1], note that psychosis is frequently caused or exacerbated by amphetamines. Plenty of people who get a prescription and who feel poor and that the world is unfair develop a "tolerance" for their meds because they are keeping 1 and selling 2 and they're contributing to that visible disorder you see. [1] https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/good-cities-cant-exist-without...

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PaulHoule 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There's a good discussion of this in the

https://www.amazon.com/Autism-Matrix-Gil-Eyal/dp/074564399X

and you can ask the question of why schizotypy

https://www.amazon.com/Schizotypy-Schizophrenia-View-Experim...

is ignored which is that by being a developmental disability "autism" avoids the stigma that a diagnosis of severe mental ilness would bring (e.g. confirmed bipolar Kanye West thinks he is autistic, Elon Musk who sure acts like he's bipolar but is not diagnosed also thinks he is autistic) If you told the parents of the kid who's being bullied in first grade who shows some signs of anxiety and seems to be dressed oddly that he has a 10% chance of losing his mind completely as a young adult they'd be horrified. Tell them that he has autism and they can get more resources.

	▲	gsf_emergency_2 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Schizotypy is perceived to be left-wing :) The less flippant rewording of that is that the schizotypal mindset prefers strong-link "positive-sum" problems