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Are we really the minority we're told we are?

TheCatWoman

Neuro diversity is such a huge thing and few people seem to understand it, but more and more symptoms are being recognised all the time and neuro-typical people seem to be finding it hard that we don't seem to be the minority they thought we were, we're mainsteam, but special, or we're treated as special, more special than them anyway, when we're not being kicked and punished for being different, although what that different actually is seems fairly indefinable.

Is it possible that we could be moving towards a post ND world?, Not yet obviously, to many of us are still struggling for recognition and diagnosis and te help that can come with it. But as the number of us grows, should it be less us and them and more of an idea of we're all a bit different and thats OK? 

Parents

  • Any condition or disorder that is purely characterised by clinicians, however well qualified, looking at the outward traits and behaviours of people is going to be rather poorly defined. There is no biomedical test for autism or any other neurodivergence. This means that the division between who is or is not neurodivergent is inherently woolly.

    However, I think that, despite the general move towards seeing a continuum between neurotypes, that the majority neurotype (neurotypical) will continue to be recognised as being such. For autism, the requirement of the condition having recognisably deleterious effects on the everyday life of the individual being necessary for clinical diagnosis, will continue to keep us somewhat distinct from the general population.

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  • Any condition or disorder that is purely characterised by clinicians, however well qualified, looking at the outward traits and behaviours of people is going to be rather poorly defined. There is no biomedical test for autism or any other neurodivergence. This means that the division between who is or is not neurodivergent is inherently woolly.

    However, I think that, despite the general move towards seeing a continuum between neurotypes, that the majority neurotype (neurotypical) will continue to be recognised as being such. For autism, the requirement of the condition having recognisably deleterious effects on the everyday life of the individual being necessary for clinical diagnosis, will continue to keep us somewhat distinct from the general population.

Children
  • in reply to Martin

    I wrote a long reply to you all yeserday evening and something happened and I lost everything but the last 2 letters I'd typed, so frustrating.

    There are always problems with statistics, it depends so much on who's interpreting them and what the sample sizes are that they're working with. Reading Gina Rippon's book the Gendered Brain, showed me just how small sample sizes were and the huge assumptions made on the back of them. 

    Who else should and could have input on diagnosis, apart from clinicians? They do seem rather limited by the diagnostic criteria and of course for some money and prestiege will be a huge motivator, drug companies really want to get in on the act and medicate us whilst making huge profits.

    I wonder if some of the kick back we're seeing is from a very primal cause, humans in general seem to be very hostile to other hominids, in our deep past we seem to have out competed our hominid cousins, the Neanderthals and Denisovans, and problably a few others too. Are we a hidden other? Are we seen by NT's as competition?

    How much do we actually know about what makes an NT brain typical? Is it like mental well being, something that nobody until fairly recently actually bothered researching because we all "knew" what is was, only it turns out we didn't really. Do we have a case like that in maternity services, where doctors only see the cases that go wrong and need massive intervention? Are out neurologists seeing enough brains, or are their sample sizes to small and they don't see enough "normal" brains.

    One of the things we're repeatedly told is that we're a social species, but so many autists in particular want time away from people and choose how they interact. When I used to do silent retreats, a lot of people really freaked out, but others, wanted to come too, the idea of being able to finish one of your own thoughts from one end to the other without interuption, was seen as something valuable and beyond reach of many. I wonder if we all feel the need to be less social to have more space in our heads with less interuption, especially now smart devices take up so much attention. Not all of those people we ND by any stretch of the imagination.

    How much could NT society learn from us ND's?