Published on 12, July, 2020
I prefer to use autism or ASD because I believe high and low-functioning autism creates a false perception of The Autism Spectrum. To me and I imagine many others, low-functioning and high-functioning create the image of a horizontal line with one side saying "most autistic" and the other side saying "least autistic", especially since I hear people say "end of the spectrum."
I see The Autism Spectrum as more of a circle divided with each section representing a difficulty, with the individual in the centre having a variation of difficulties with differing levels of severity to one another. Like someone described as low-functioning may be able to walk through shops with no oversensitivity while someone described as high-functioning can have a higher level of severity in sensory processing that it's too hard and not be able to.
Do you think we should avoid the use of high and low-functioning as they're not clinical terms anyway?
its mainly because its a spectrum, and i guess for inclusions sake maybe? to make it so the ones that appear more functioning dont get excluded entirely and abandoned. and probably because they keep merging new stuff into it all the time like aspergers and so on, hell at one point autism was supposedly on the schizophrenic spectrum instead just like aspergers now being on the autistic spectrum. so things change and definitions switch, it will likely again change in the future or be a part of another condition or add more conditions to its sphere or whatever.
autism was thought to of been child schizophrenia in the beginning allot as changed