Talk:Autism

Overdiagnosis
What do people think about the overdiagnosis controversy? Late last year we were struggling a bit with our 5 year old son's behaviour; at the time I was attributing it to ADHD, although in hindsight I think a lot of it was due to sub-optimal parenting, partially triggered by my own mental health issues (and my wife's as well). We took him to see a psychologist. The psychologist thought he might have ASD; I wasn't convinced, but thought it wouldn't do any harm to test for it. She wasn't actually qualified to do that, so we ended up going to someone else for the ASD assessment. This other psychologist saw my wife & I for 3 hours, and our son for a bit less than 2, and then wrote a report diagnosing him with ASD. I was a bit surprised by it all. When I read the report, it was full of exaggerations. For example, she claimed we were concerned about his "obsessive tendencies", when we weren't; and everything he was interested in was put down as "restricted interests". Stuff he'd talk about once every few days (e.g. his interest in geography), she presented it as if that was all he could talk about all day long. She also told us that he was really only Level 1, but she had put him down as Level 2 because that was the cutoff for Australian government disability funding ("NDIS List A"). The speech therapist report, I didn't understand it at the time, but reading between the lines it suggested he didn't have ASD – the speech therapist said he had good eye contact, good joint attention, and no problem switching tasks – despite having been given a copy of the speech therapy report to read, the psychologist claimed in her report he had problems in all three areas, and made no effort to explain how the speech therapist reached the opposite conclusion. Whole experience makes me think ASD overdiagnosis really is a big thing. Our GP told us that we'd had an encounter with the "autism industry", and that I'd gone into diagnosis with the wrong expectation – expecting it to be some kind of objective and scientific process, as opposed to just an exercise in diagnosing as many children as possible (so they all get government disability funding that can then be spent on the same psychologists who did the diagnosis). DepressedAustralian (talk) 05:32, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
 * That sounds like a tough position to be in. I'm not much familiar with Australia, so can't comment on whether it's a widespread problem, but it definitely sounds like your assessment of the situation is correct.  It's also possible that the psychologist had some confirmation bias (common in people who are specialized to look for a certain thing, they'll see it everywhere).  Also, you're correct in that it can be rather subjective, often with differing diagnoses.  Diagnosis and some form of therapy can be a useful tool, though, if necessary.  But trust your intuition too, you disagreed with much of the psychologist's report and received an opposing report from speech therapist, and acknowledged that there were potentially other exacerbating factors.  You and your wife are the ones most familiar with your son.  Hope all goes well with you guys.   11:04, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I guess the thing that worries me... I can't be 100% confident he doesn't have ASD (sometimes I even wonder whether or not I might have it, although I'm probably closer to "broadly autistic phenotype" than actual ASD.) He does have some ASD-like traits, such as having no friends, below average social skills, and below average emotional literacy. But, it is hard to work out whether that's actually ASD, or other causes... like social isolation (we have few friends so we've given him few opportunities to form friendships – he just started primary school, and we are trying really hard to make friends this year with other parents, to try to set up playdates etc). Or anxiety (anxiety can be a symptom of ASD, but it can also be a totally separate thing that can also produce some similar symptoms to ASD). Or again, he might have ADHD, and there is a lot of symptom overlap between ASD and ADHD. If I could actually find a good psychologist, who was interested in working out what is really going on as opposed to just constructing a case for government disability funding... My own psychologist (who only does adults) recommended another psychologist practice... and we went there, and saw one of the junior psychologists (provisionally registered) for an initial interview, and we thought it was positive – she said if we had doubts about the diagnosis, why not do the assessment again with somebody else to get a second opinion. But afterwards, her superiors intervened, and said if a child was assessed as being eligible for disability funding, they didn't want to reassess them due to the risk that the new assessment might conclude that they were ineligible for that funding... that said, at this stage, we haven't made any plans to apply for that funding... and also the junior psychologist was suddenly taken ill and they cancelled all our appointments with her... so, we've just sort of given up on child psychologists for the moment. Still taking him to the speech therapist because I feel like she is actually useful. DepressedAustralian (talk) 01:08, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

Censorship of scientific facts
Reputable journals have noted the link between autism and gender variance. Why not let readers know that there’s a likely possibility that we should be telling teenage autistic girls that their masculine way of behavior is autism and not because she’s really a man? We have to be very careful about overdiagnosing gender identity disorder. --JAW (talk) 01:01, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Perhaps it would seem less like trolling if you actually linked your sources sometime, just saying y'know. 01:35, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
 * I thought there would be legitimate good-faith discussion between trans rates and autism rates, despite the whiff of transphobia in the initial edit, hence why I lifted the initial perma ban, but seems like it's just bad-faith transphobia. Carry on. 01:54, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
 * To be fair, they did link to an article in the edit made to the article itself. Appears to be some sort of autism related site, although not one of the so-called scholarly journals they referenced. I do think that this is a topic that should be discussed because it is true that there is a correlation between being autistic and trans identity (though of course causation has not been established from what I’ve read) but the topic would benefit from a nuanced approach that lacks the language used by JAW that has fallen strongly out of favor in recent years by anyone who knows what they’re talking about. --Mr. Bojangles (talk) 02:08, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that source was the reason I initially lifted the ban and invited for talkpage discussion, but reverted the edits mainly because the language in the edits was questionable. I think we should mention the correlation as well, but we should discuss the possible confounding factors too, such as people with trans identity may be likely to seek mental health help because of struggles related to the trans identity and happen to be diagnosed with autism. 02:32, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
 * As someone who's both transgender and autistic, all I have to say to this user is fuck off. — Oxyaena   Harass  09:12, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

Chemicals in the water are turning the freakin' mice autistic!
A study found that when a pregnant mouse is exposed to BPA, its descendants have an increased likelihood of showing autism-like social deficits. Worse yet, it appears these effects are epigenetic in nature.

Article · The actual study

— 17:53, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Protect?
Someone should really protect this page. It has recieved a lot of vandalism recently. --Andrew5 (talk) 03:01, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't really call "twice in one night" "a lot," but if it does get vandalized again tonight (and I'm online to see it) I'll add something for a few days. ℕoir LeSable (talk) 03:05, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
 * That's fine, but can you still block the recent socks vandalizing pages? I'm going to bed now (10:09 local time, and I have to get up kinda early tomorrow (~8am EST).) Andrew5 (talk) 03:09, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Copy that. Looks like LGM's working it, but I'll help out. ℕoir LeSable (talk) 03:13, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes I'll probably get around to blocking a future User:Watch out! Green machine coming through! too. 03:14, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm Autistic and find this article bs
I think a lot of conservatives may have Autism. Autism is great. Leftism is not. You have just showcased your hate against Autistic people. 2003:C3:3725:3000:1D3C:582:E055:43CD (talk) 12:36, 2 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Nowhere in this article states that autism and conservatives are mutually exclusive concepts. Autism is not necessarily "great". It is a mental health developmental disorder (with documented executive dysfunctions) that causes people to struggle particularly during social interactions (due to their inhibited ability to perceive emotional cues), a disorder that society stigmatizes and ridicules their behaviors. However, this disorder runs on a spectrum with multiple gradients with how it presents itself and the severity of the disorder. It is not a debilitating health condition either; it is manageable through therapy, medication, behavior training, and so on. Nowhere in this article advocates leftism (also please define "leftism", I do not believe you understand what it is); this is a construct of your own biases projected from reading the article. The only time politics may factor in this page is our criticism of mental health denial as well as our robust criticism of the anti-vaccination movement that objectifies and demeans autistic people as well as prevent many of them from getting essential vaccinations. The anti-vaccination movement is considered mostly right-wing, so by proxy I suppose this could be a harsh critique on right-wing viewpoints, but no way is this necessarily an endorsement of leftism. We also criticize pseudoscientific treatments which left-wing people may be prone to practicing and we've brought up left-wing vegan/animal rights organizations like PETA to critique them. The last sentence is entirely unsubstantiated. Please show us where we claim to hate autistic people. 19:55, 2 January 2023 (UTC)
 * To be pedantic, autism is a developmental disorder, not a mental disorder. Vee (talk) 19:56, 2 January 2023 (UTC)