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In England, are people with an ASD considered disabled and/or vulnerable under English Law?

zone_tripper
over 12 years ago

In England, under English Law (Mental Health Capacity Act, Vunerable Adults Act, Disability Discrimination Act, Equalities Act, Autism Act, etc), are adults with an ASD considered to be disabled, mentally disabled, vulnerable adults, or similar?

And if so, what are the legal rights of such ASD suffers, what are they entitled to that differ from a non-ASD person, so on and so forth, etc? 

(I have Asperger Syndrome and suffer badly from depression, anxiety, paranoia, fear for the future, difficulty coping with change, etc.  So I am wondering whether I am considered as having a disablity, a mental disability, and/or considered a vulnerable adult.)

Parents
  • over 12 years ago

    To come back to Longman's point. I am not denying at all that you can have mild AS and be very successful, do well at uni, get a degree and Post-Grad and be a teacher. Everyone is affected by AS differently. But to have a diagnosis, as stated in the DSM and other manuals, you need to have a triad of impairment in the social, communicative and imaginative areas of development. You also need to have repetitive behaviours and need for routines, or have obsessive and narrow interests. If diagnosed in adulthood, the psychologist/psychiatrist will check to see that these behaviours were present since early childhood, and they will also look at your current behaviours to see if enough autistic features persist to warrant a diagnosis, while understanding the coping mechanisms that the person has learnt over the years. All good clinicians will take this developmental profile. However,  to have AS proper and not to be a borderline case, the person must be significantly impaired in their day to day functioning. Yet many individuals are diagnosed with AS even if the condition does not adversely affect their life anymore.  Maybe clinicians are becoming more liberal in their approach to diagnosis or they disregard the part of the diagnostic manual that mentions significant impairment.

Reply
  • over 12 years ago

    To come back to Longman's point. I am not denying at all that you can have mild AS and be very successful, do well at uni, get a degree and Post-Grad and be a teacher. Everyone is affected by AS differently. But to have a diagnosis, as stated in the DSM and other manuals, you need to have a triad of impairment in the social, communicative and imaginative areas of development. You also need to have repetitive behaviours and need for routines, or have obsessive and narrow interests. If diagnosed in adulthood, the psychologist/psychiatrist will check to see that these behaviours were present since early childhood, and they will also look at your current behaviours to see if enough autistic features persist to warrant a diagnosis, while understanding the coping mechanisms that the person has learnt over the years. All good clinicians will take this developmental profile. However,  to have AS proper and not to be a borderline case, the person must be significantly impaired in their day to day functioning. Yet many individuals are diagnosed with AS even if the condition does not adversely affect their life anymore.  Maybe clinicians are becoming more liberal in their approach to diagnosis or they disregard the part of the diagnostic manual that mentions significant impairment.

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