On Facebook there’s a community that see themselves as part of Applied Behaviour Analysis claiming they want to help autistic people.
I found this ABA community giving approval of people saying autistic people are a disease, nothing but a burden of society. I shared that in my experience I’ve seen people saying things like this has lead autistic people to self hatred and suicide. I reminded them of what the father of ABA therapy, Ole Ivar Lovaas, had to say about autistic people and that he was even the founder of Gay Conversion Therapy.
Parents were asking questions about autism, one of the things I hate most about ABA is they illogically treat neurological conditions as behavioural conditions. Once I answered questions and gave answers that explain their child’s behaviour neurologically, it opened doors to just how harmful treating a neurological condition as a behavioural condition like ABA does is. As an outcome of exposing the risks of today’s ABA and sharing that the foundation of ABA had no intention of helping autistic people I were expelled from their community.
What does this say about ABA to you?
