Quote from: jhkim;281513Apparently, you're assuming that there simply is no such thing as positive help.  That any treatment is inherently bullshit, and the only sensible choice is just to lock 'em up or not.  It's not just that some treatment is mishandled -- but every case of treatment is not only inherently wrong, but worse than no treatment at all.  

Not at all, I'm willing to suggest that there may be more than 1 in 2000 cases of real autism out there, possibly as many as 1 in 1000. And those 1 in 1000 deserve all the help they can get, humane help, that will allow them to lead good lives, treatment to try to manage their autism and allow them to interact with the world to the absolute fullest extent of their ability; all the while knowing that AT THIS TIME there's no "cure" for Autism, and accepting that its likely that being really autistic, these people won't every be able to fully "mainstream" (in the sense of total independence), because its just not in their range of ability.

Then, on the other hand you have the rest of the alleged 1 in 122 (instead of the old 1 in 200; that means that there's 16 times as many kids being diagnosed as "autistic" now than there was only 20 years ago!), many of whom need nothing more than to stop being treated as "special" and get told that no; its not "ok" for them to act like antisocial little freaks, and that they CAN in fact "help it", and that its time to stop giving them excuses. There are some others that might also have serious behavioural issues that are caused by psychological traumas of some sort, and those could also needs some behavioural therapy.  There are some that might also just be weird kids, with whom there's NOTHING wrong with them at all, and just need to be treated normally instead of getting the "I'm AUTISTIC" sign slapped onto their chests for the rest of their lives, guaranteeing a life of self-excusing victimhood and diminished expectations.

Clearer now?

RPGPundit

Quote from: Monster Manuel;281531However I wanted to clear one thing up. When I mentioned that my son might "grow out" of some of his behaviors, I wasn't saying that his brain would repair itself. I was saying that he might create reasonable working models of proper social behavior so he could do things like shop for himself, or hold a job. These models are consciously used things- most people can say "that guy's mad" by instinct. An autistic person may be able to come to the same conclusion by logic. They might say to themselves "That was a weird thing he just said. Let me look at his face. Ok. Red face-, frown, eyebrows... anger?" and be able to react in a similar way to someone who gets it naturally.

He may never reach the level of independence I'd like for him, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to try.

I do wish you luck with your son, and imagine that it must be very difficult for you, and at the same time that you will be doing your best for him.

I also knew, the moment I put on this thread, that SOMEONE was going to show up very early on and say "My son/brother/sister/uncle/whatever is autistic and you're a MONSTER for saying these horrible things!", which is the usual response to any attempt to point out the truth about the "asshole vs. aspergers" dilemma; the truth in question being that a great many people, especially on the internet, use autism as an excuse as to why they should be allowed to be assholes; or (more often in real life) as a claim as to why their child is a special snowflake who should be forgiven for anything they do and their kid (and by default the parents too) should get to monopolize and get special treatment in absolutely everything they do, ever.
And, the sad truth is, despite your dismissive remarks about it here (and I'm sure you did get it diagnosed) that a HUGE number of people who claim to be autistic or that their children are autistic have either self-diagnosed or they've gotten a "pop" diagnosis from a school "councellor", "alternative therapist", or social worker who is utterly UNqualified to give such a diagnosis.

So I knew someone was going to come along and feel offended at what I said, but I felt it needed saying anyways. The people you should really feel offended at are the assholes who are turning your son's real disorder into a fucking joke, and will end up only making his life harder, because people like me will end up doubting the reality of his disability because of a plethora of bad experiences with assholes who fraudulently misappropriated Autism to act as their own little self-justifying excuse for crapulence.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Monster Manuel;281534Incidentally, my son isn't on any medications for autism.

If you don't mind me asking, because I honestly don't know, how could you treat autism with medication? It doesn't seem like a condition that could be medicated away.

Quote from: RPGPundit;281590I also knew, the moment I put on this thread, that SOMEONE was going to show up very early on and say "My son/brother/sister/uncle/whatever is autistic and you're a MONSTER for saying these horrible things!",

It's all right, I know what you do, and you usually do it pretty well.

QuoteSo I knew someone was going to come along and feel offended at what I said, but I felt it needed saying anyways. The people you should really feel offended at are the assholes who are turning your son's real disorder into a fucking joke, and will end up only making his life harder, because people like me will end up doubting the reality of his disability because of a plethora of bad experiences with assholes who fraudulently misappropriated Autism to act as their own little self-justifying excuse for crapulence.
RPGPundit

Sure. But for me, it was that in making your greater point, you made some insinuations that hit a little too close to home. It's hard enough for my son to be autistic, but to also have to overcome people who don't believe he has it because he can't play a piano tune after hearing it once or tell you how many grains of rice you just dropped, gets frustrating. You're not the first to question the diagnosis (rhetorically in your case), but I think I just unloaded all the frustration I have towards the armchair psychologists I know who rarely even have a GED.

I hope I was at least entertaining.

Quote from: jeff37923;281592If you don't mind me asking, because I honestly don't know, how could you treat autism with medication? It doesn't seem like a condition that could be medicated away.

I've heard of autistic kids being zonked out to make them too spacey to do things like stimming or rocking. It's basically medicating them to make things more comfortable for the public.  

I don't know of any officially recognised treatments for the actual root causes, however.

Quote from: RPGPundit;281589Not at all, I'm willing to suggest that there may be more than 1 in 2000 cases of real autism out there, possibly as many as 1 in 1000. And those 1 in 1000 deserve all the help they can get, humane help, that will allow them to lead good lives, treatment to try to manage their autism and allow them to interact with the world to the absolute fullest extent of their ability; all the while knowing that AT THIS TIME there's no "cure" for Autism, and accepting that its likely that being really autistic, these people won't every be able to fully "mainstream" (in the sense of total independence), because its just not in their range of ability.
RPGPundit

Ok, triple post. Interestingly enough (I'm not being sarcastic), there are autistic people who have overcome the lion's share of the issues they have, and end up marrying, usually to other autistic people in the same boat. I say usually, because while I've never heard of an autistic person marrying a non-autistic person specifically, I imagine it might be possible.

Quote from: RPGPundit;281589Not at all, I'm willing to suggest that there may be more than 1 in 2000 cases of real autism out there, possibly as many as 1 in 1000. And those 1 in 1000 deserve all the help they can get, humane help, that will allow them to lead good lives, treatment to try to manage their autism and allow them to interact with the world to the absolute fullest extent of their ability; all the while knowing that AT THIS TIME there's no "cure" for Autism, and accepting that its likely that being really autistic, these people won't every be able to fully "mainstream" (in the sense of total independence), because its just not in their range of ability.

But your assertion is that no one anywhere in the world has this bright idea of yours -- that not just some but all of the actual attempts to help autistic kids today are a failure.  

Quote from: RPGPundit;281589Then, on the other hand you have the rest of the alleged 1 in 122 (instead of the old 1 in 200; that means that there's 16 times as many kids being diagnosed as "autistic" now than there was only 20 years ago!)

And as far as I can see, you are relying purely on your own preconceptions as to what that means.  I'm not an expert on the subject, but anecdotally, I don't know much more than 122 kids and I know one who is considered autistic.  To my eye, he seems like someone who would likely have been institutionalized twenty years ago -- whether he would have been diagnosed as autistic I'm not sure.  (I sort of wonder if he should, especially given how he attacks his siblings.)  Anyway, as for the change of rate, I think there are three factors, all of which are likely true to some degree:

1) The underlying rate of autism is going up.
2) Some kids twenty years ago were autistic but not diagnosed as such -- in particular in the sense that they would have responded well to similar treatments that are now successful in helping autistic kids.  
3) Some kids today are improperly diagnosed as autistic -- in particular in the sense that treatments that are successful with the core of autistic kids are counterproductive with them.  

You hold based on your medical expertise, that it would be possible for autism rates to go up 2x, but that it is impossible that it could be more than that.  Also, that there are cases of (3) and no cases of (2).  In other words, you might agree that mental health of twenty years ago was inhumane -- but you still hold that they understood autism and diagnosed it correctly much better back then.

Quote from: RPGPundit;281483Ok, I'm sorry here, but if 20 years ago you had 1 in 2000 kids being diagnosed as autistic, and now you have 1 in 150 girls and 1 in 94 boys, then something has gone seriously loopy.

That's your qualified medical 'opinion'?

Obviously I don't need to question your credentials, but indulge me: your knowledge and experience of such disorders and conditions is?

Thought not.

The medicalization of aberrant behavior, which has massively increased in the past decades, is a double-edged sword IMO.

On one hand, you get validated as someone who's suffering from an illness. On the other hand, you get stigmatized as someone who's suffering from an illness.

Used to be that a lot of people were considered merely "odd." Depending on the nature of the oddity, they may have been better off being treated with indifference rather than with attention.

I don't mean to say that at some point attention wil turn into persecution, though given the experiences of the past century you can't rule that out.

I mean to say that medical indifference leaves room for personal self-determination whereas medical attention will do the determining for you. It will tell you that you're ill, and then tell you what you need to do to become healthy.

I'm worried about people being treated like ticking time bombs the moment others learn they have mental issues (no matter what these are). It's like they are automatically downgraded to something less than a human being.

And yes, I know that ticking time bombs exist: I had to gently convince someone to hand over a knife in my previous job, when he suffered a complete meltdown right in front of me.

This brings up an interesting question for me, since there are two people from Uruguay here- how are people who have a firm diagnosis of autism treated (by others, not medically) in your country, and if you know, can you answer the same for Argentina? I hope it doesn't cause a huge digression, but I've been wondering.

Quote from: jhkim;281616But your assertion is that no one anywhere in the world has this bright idea of yours -- that not just some but all of the actual attempts to help autistic kids today are a failure.  

No, I'm sure there's some good therapies, and a lot of bad ones.

Quote1) The underlying rate of autism is going up.
2) Some kids twenty years ago were autistic but not diagnosed as such -- in particular in the sense that they would have responded well to similar treatments that are now successful in helping autistic kids.  

My own position accepts the possibility that due to a combination of BOTH of these factors the diagnosible autism rates could have DOUBLED in the last 20 years, which is still an astounding increase.

Quote3) Some kids today are improperly diagnosed as autistic -- in particular in the sense that treatments that are successful with the core of autistic kids are counterproductive with them.  

You hold based on your medical expertise, that it would be possible for autism rates to go up 2x, but that it is impossible that it could be more than that.  Also, that there are cases of (3) and no cases of (2).  In other words, you might agree that mental health of twenty years ago was inhumane -- but you still hold that they understood autism and diagnosed it correctly much better back then.

Yup, because the alternative would be to assume that today there is an epidemic increase of unimaginable proportions.  If autism rates in children had really gone up SIXTEENFOLD in the last 20 years, this would easily be the most significant health crisis facing our species today.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;281617That's your qualified medical 'opinion'?

Obviously I don't need to question your credentials, but indulge me: your knowledge and experience of such disorders and conditions is?

Thought not.

Its called common sense. If someone were to claim that the rates of cancer had gone up SIXTEENFOLD in the last two decades, it would be a sign of some kind of apocalyptic crisis.  If the rates of psychosis were to have gone up sixteen times the rate they were 20 years ago, that would indicate a civilization on the verge of collapse.

Now, you can imagine this is the case with autism, but in that case it would be time to go apeshit, move into the woods, stock up on the AK-47s and live off of berries and racoon dung or something while waiting for the End Times to begin.

The alternative is to suppose that the vast majority of that 1600% increase in Autism rates would be due to a combination of misdiagnosis and a massive pop-psychology-driven dilution of the definition of the disorder to the point that the term itself has become meaningless, something that is undoubtedly to the massive detriment of REAL autistics (who will find themselves having to compete for help with kids who have no business being diagnosed as "autistic", and having to deal with people who come to assume that "autism" is a "fake disease" because of the vast number of people they've seen claiming to be autistic who are in fact just assholes).

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;281635Yup, because the alternative would be to assume that today there is an epidemic increase of unimaginable proportions.  If autism rates in children had really gone up SIXTEENFOLD in the last 20 years, this would easily be the most significant health crisis facing our species today.

So, just to confirm, your logic is that because this would be a major epidemic, that therefore it doesn't exist?

Quote from: Monster Manuel;281633This brings up an interesting question for me, since there are two people from Uruguay here- how are people who have a firm diagnosis of autism treated (by others, not medically) in your country, and if you know, can you answer the same for Argentina? I hope it doesn't cause a huge digression, but I've been wondering.

Jong is usually better at digging up specific details about these things than I am; but I will say this:
1. If you are using private health care, the level of treatments available for just about any health issue are generally just as good as anything you'll find in north america; and here in Uruguay at least private health care isn't forbiddingly expensive; you'll probably find it better than the public health care in the U.S., and while the quality of care will be about the same as in countries like Canada, the "private" aspect of it means that you will likely be able to access certain health services with less waiting periods.  Also, both Uruguay and Argentina (especially the latter) are well-known for having a huge community of psychologists (Argentina has the highest psychologist-per-capita ratio of the entire world, which might explain why so many Argentinians seem to be insane!), and I've seen a wide variety of schools of thought in this field ranging from the conventional to the new-agey alternative-therapy types.

2. The overall perception of autism in the public view is probably more old-school here than in North America; people with tics and social awkwardness are generally just "weird" (or "eccentric", if they're rich), and autism, when its thought of, tends to be thought of as serious autism; there isn't, in other words, the north american culture of "syndromehood" where everyone and their cousin gets to claim to have something wrong with them that excuses their behaviours or personal failings.
On the other hand, I've also found Uruguayan society to be far more accepting of eccentricity, way less judgmental of people than north american culture is; though obviously I didn't go through high school here, my perceptions of it based on what I've seen and talked to with younger people would seem to indicate that its certainly less cut-throat and toxic to those who are "different", especially for things they genuinely can't help. The other side of this is that there is less tolerance for people being willfully anti-social.  In other words, here it matters less that you "fit in" but it matters more that you try to be friendly; if that makes sense.

RPGPundit