It really makes one sound like an asshole, but I have to admit that this is more or less how I see things. It's just so common for people to self-diagnose or be professionally diagnosed after trying their best to meet the symptons that the moment I hear a claim of psychological condition I dismiss it until personal observation seems to confirm it. No, I'm not a professional myself, but sometimes all it takes is a little common sense to see when someone's exaggerating normal behaviour. The mass drive to diagnose psychological conditions like they were candy has also made me a little hesitant about seeking professional advice/help for problems in life. A quick read of the Wikipedia article (as we all know, this now makes me a professional in the field) makes me seem to be a perfect case of social anxiety disorder. I don't want to be part of the trend and prescribed some pills to make it all go away or a fancy phrase to throw around, I want to better understand my problems so I can better deal with them rather than using them as a scapegoat.
I knew a guy in college who once claimed that he was a recovering manic depressive paranoid schizophrenic prone to personality disorders. My first though was, "No, you're just an ass." He went on to list a few of his other disorders, but I forget what they were. I must have tuned out by that point. I suppose I could have told him to his face that I didn't buy into his crap, then claimed that he just imagined the whole conversation. But, it was dinner time and I was hungry.
I have no form of autism, although I am a bit damaged but that's another story for another time; I closely know several people with varying levels of mental disability (from mild aspergers through to quite severe cerebral-palsy with associated neurological impairment) and am closely aware of many others - as a regular patron and supporter (though not an active helper) of my local Camphill community. I have also had two very personal experiences with dementia (one lasting 13.5 years on a day to day basis) and a friend is currently recovering from para neoplastic limbic encephalitis. So although I'm uneducated on the subject, I have a wide circle of friends, acquaintances and family with varying forms of mental impairment. My experiences thus far can be stated in two rather clumsy sentences. Treat people as people. Don't argue, don't disagree. Which, if you stop and think about it, isn't too bad a way to deal with any social interaction.
Have you ever googled symptoms when feeling unwell, I did once when I had a bad cold.....scared the crap out of myself and had to turn the computer off.
I do have autism. I love IT, am semi-creative, am OK in social environments, slow on sarcasm, avid modder Zoon nailed how I am VERY closely. Don't have any "tick", though. I'm just frustrated with teachers that assume autism = learning disability = unable to learn anything = stupidity.
I do get sarcasm and such. I'm British after all. We're sarcasm incarnate. My main problem is how single-minded I get and the frustration it often causes when things just aren't right.
I can appreciate that so much, Zoon. I know that it just irks me when something isn't working right, despite all my attempts to the contrary.
I recall a case of this (from god knows where), Fella living just sort of fine becomes a carer to proper ASD's and gets on great with them - no problems. Struggles with the other carers, who struggle with the clients. He then gets referred and diagnosed at the alright end of the rainbow. This is a good series Young-Autistic-Stagestruck (although not been on for a long time), apparently 1 in 100 on the spectrum - I wonder what the distribution is. Ben is a good case to follow for the very high functioning category, and there is a nice run down of some information under "Read More". Stuff in the mind is never black and white, plenty of grey stuff in the boundaries.
Naaw dude (dude, naaw)! What has been posted on the internet, cannot be un-posted. I would like to give everybody in this thread a cordial word of caution: be careful what you disclose to the world. It's a prejudiced, prying world out there, and private matters are private for a reason.
Indeed Nexxo; and if we ever hang out and crack open a few tins you might find out after a year or two... remote possibility perhaps. It was at about this stage that mates at uni were made aware.
I'll just second Nexxo's statement. I've shared my story with a different disease not for the fame it could get me, but because it's rare, poorly understood and very difficult to get proper help for. I chose to give up a modicum of privacy in the hopes it would help someone else. Autism is not like Marfan's. It has plenty of people trying to offer good help to people, and it's a disease that doesn't cripple people's bodies or kill them without warning. It's plenty easy to get info on autism out there. Feel free to look up living with Marfan's. There's very little info. It's just hard to get. Autism spectrum disorders are the "in" thing to diagnose people with, just like ADD and ADHD were five to ten years ago. People who are the least bit antisocial now get slapped with Asperger's, which lets them justify their behaviors instead of attempting to integrate in society. My wife studied special education, and she assures me that while Aspergers and autism are real and no laughing matter, the majority of people slapped with autism spectrum are just antisocial. It's a cop-out, and it limits the amount of help available to people who really need it. In closing, be careful what you post, and be careful of people who are too quick to diagnose flavor of the week disorders (or in other words, things that are real but that are overdiagnosed for whatever reason) because in the end, this is the internet-where men are men, women are men and children are NSA agents.
In addition to that - in the UK it is now incredibly hard for a child to be statemented for special needs, we have several in school at the moment that clearly need it and parents who have tried to move heaven and earth to make it happen but as it comes at a cost to the county LEA for a dedicated LSA to support the statemented child it's now as rare as rocking horse poop for it to happen. So although it is fashionable for people to assign conditions/syndromes/disorders to themselves - those that really do truly need the help are more often than not being left to one side and are suffering as a result of this over-diagnosis of kids with nothing more sinister than zero boundaries and pushy parents who cannot be fagged to accept responsibility for their poor parenting that bully doctors into an ADHD/ADD/ASD diagnosis for an easy blame transferral and a way of avoiding doing anything positive to rectify the kids behaviour themselves. All in my 10+ years of professional experience of course and it looks set to get worse for the next few years until being a parent rather than a mate comes back into fashion.
What sucks even more is when the child is statemented and the school outright doesn't want them in 99% of the time because they're not following their 'perfect' gradings. They simply want the monetary funding for said child, to spend on everything else. I'm still amazed that School is open... Everything I know now shows that, at least, they were bending the rules, if not outright breaking them. (LSA only 30%~ of the time. I get statemented and 'all of a sudden' Head Mistress is driving an Audi TT, so on and so forth.)
Maybe in some schools but not mine - we have an excellent team of LSA's who put up with stuff you wouldn't believe and our head is very fiscally responsible and discloses the finances to the general staff - Only once have I seen an example of an Aspergers pupils rejected when the school was made aware of his diagnosis and that was post 16 for one of the few state boarding schools that still exist. They wanted his guaranteed A grades for A-levels in Physics/Chem/Maths/Further maths/Statistics though - just not his condition even though his parents were prepared to do a 60 mile round trip twice a day to make sure he had access to the school and wouldn't have to board - needless to say he went to they're equally well regarded but non-boarding local rival state school who welcomed him with open arms and no conditions.
I was not statemented till i was 19 after many test's by 2 individual assessments by psychiatrist's... but both primary and secondary school psychiatrist's failed to pick it even tho i was statemented as special need's...
I took a questionnaire after my friend found out he had asperges. He scored a 30 something, average is 8 or 10, I got a 5. Not sure whether that is good or bad
