I'm having a rant. Bear with me.
Great you have ASD, we don't know what it is, we don't know what causes it, we don't know how to diagnose it, we don't know how to catergorise it, (change 'we don't know' to 'we disgree on' if it makes you feel better) but you have it, good luck.
Pyschatry, the DSM, Baron-Cohen are fluffy enough, but trying to grasp anything definitive from the hypothesis, abstractions, speculation and incomplete data out there is something else entirely, I wonder if the fluff of ASD is just giving people jobs.
What /is/ ASD?
Is it a word for quirky people whose accompanying commobidities means they require support?
Is ASD it's own commbodities e.g. PD, ID, MD, ND, LD, SD, AD, GC which taken together equate interactional difficulties? ~
Is it a collection of disorders whose symptons just happen to be very similar?
Is it the result of an interruption in usual brain development?
Is it an altnerative form of common brain development?
Why is it a disability?
Does anyone even know?
It's so fluffy to me. In terms of agreement I see ony 3 unanimous phrases:
difficultuties with interacting, hetergenity, (brain) developmental problem.
To unpack - 1 major characteristic is difficulty with interacting. And then the hetergenity of ASD means you could have a few, to several to none of the other commonly associated characteristics -which in themselves would show up in a variety of ways according to the individual and to varying degrees on top of that.
Right now to me this is looking like a fun interpretitve guessing game for a doctor
However the reson for this difficulty interacting is meant to lie in something wrong happening in the brain of an ASD person while it was still developing - but who gets their brain checked when they are being diagnosed? Right, it's down to your doctors opinion, maybe if you're unlucky even their mood. In fact ASD is often called a syndrome, I asked wiki what a syndrom is, here's what it said:
'A syndrome, in medicine and psychology, is the collection of signs and symptoms that are observed in, and characteristic of, a single condition.' So basically you're depending on your doctors observational and interpreting skills--well good luck--might as well go to an astrologer.
There are so many theories my head hurts, lets hope that if your doctor is farmilar with any, it's the one you can actually relate to -
Androgen Theory
Theory of Mind
Executive Function
Weak Central Coherance
Multiple defciet account
Female Protective Model (chromosone version vs wiring version)
Social Bias Theory
There's the risk factors to take your pick from too
Epigenetics (a number of genes whose combination increase suscetability)
Inheritance
Prenatal to childhood theories inc:
Parental age
Illness
Exposure to particular substences/chemicals/hormones
Childbirth complications
GI
Nutrition
It's a bloody study discipline isn't it? Individuals go undiagnosed, the diagnosed go poorly supported or unsupported and then we just have fluff, lot's of talk of fluff, fluffity fluffity fluffity-
