Published on 12, July, 2020
One thing I've always struggled with since being on this forum and understanding more about autism, is the fact that levels are no longer used.
I understand the idea of the spectrum and that we can all shoot off at angles and pick up where something affects us deeply.
However, levels were to do with the amount of support required, so how much a person's functionality is impacted by autism.
Level 1, 'Asperger's Syndrome', 'high functioning' were for people who had what was then termed as 'mild' autism.
I realise that 'mild' probably isn't appropriate for us.
However, there are threads on this forum relating to a 'solution' for autism and 'acceptance'.
I can answer for myself and my own struggles but I feel sometimes that the people who are without speech (some of whom I think are actually on this forum, from reading profiles), who cannot live independently without support, are not taken into account.
This is a reason why I actually find it quite hard to answer these questions, because I see myself as 'level 1', high functioning and I can't answer for people whose lives are so very deeply impacted by their autism and their carers.
I have diagnoses of schizophrenia/schizoaffective and ASD(Asperger's). It can be hard to say how much each affects my functioning. Re the ASD I'm neither a 'needs 24/7 care' type, nor am I an 'Autism is a major strength for me' type.I do have the frequent but not universal, autistic adaptive functioning < IQ thing going on and get quite a lot of support re daily manual/practical tasks.
My psychiatric care for over 40 years was blighted by 'If you did well at x, you should do well at y' thinking by mental health professionals including psychiatrists. Failure to match up to that was dismissed as just being a major character flaw, and had me labelled as a bad patient.. That situation only changed with my daughter putting the mental health team here in Wiltshire in the picture,prior to my moving here, as to what the real picture was. ,