New York Times Guest Essay arguing the spectrum is too broad

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The Autism Spectrum Is Too Broad

It is too broad. Seemingly these days everybody with mental health issues is an autistic person behind a socially skilled mask.

I've had serious mental illness since 1975. The ASD dx came much latter,2019. Partly due to diagnostic overshadowing, partly due to autistic anxiety about moving from Essex to Wiltshire.
I can rightly be called many things, good and bad, but 'socially skilled' isn't one of them. The only way I possibly mask is by being a people pleaser. I'm not good at making on the spot adjustments based on another person's body language etc

I am quite socially-skilled for a spectrumer, and I don't even mask that much, but I'm still visibly quirky. But I'm talking about people who don't have any odd ways or social quirks and seemed to fit in all through school, etc. The answer usually is ''they're probably just extremely excellent maskers''. So, basically, anybody in the world could be a spectrumer in disguise with extremely excellent masking skills. Even the very popular, outgoing NT you've known all your life who never had any trouble fitting in at school, but had got anxiety or depression in adulthood, maybe even by a trigger like a marriage break-up or something, and then the next thing you know they've just been diagnosed with autism.

The spectrum is broad from a highly intelligent level 1 autistic without comorbidities to some level 3 autistics with intellectual disabilities. But it doesn't mean people are misdiagnosed. It just means that the spectrum is broad.

My difficulty fitting in at school started/became more noticeable on going to prep school at the age of 8, and got worse on going to public school at the age of 13. It was a stepwise progression.

What makes me autistic (among other things) is I cannot innately read nonverbal social cues. Something in my brain just doesn't exist that's meant to help me do that. Communication is only a small percentage verbal, so I'm blind to most of it. Wouldn't say I'm socially skilled at all.

The fact that I can technically hold a job and live semi-independently doesn't change that. (I say technically because autistic burnout happened to me last year/earlier this year and took away my ability to function or hold a job at all for 6+ months.)

It's not that it's too broad.

Maybe it's difficult for me to explain it in English.

But the spectrum is different from what's written, completely different from what the autism spectrum is.

It's not debatable: it's as explained in the video.

It's not that one becomes one through similar behaviors.

The diagnoses are *different*, but this concept doesn't enter people's heads, different from those of *other individuals, who aren't even on the spectrum at all.
Precise diagnoses are made: if one falls within it, it's objective, one turns to trained doctors who are scientists, it's not that the diagnoses are haphazard.

Because this concept is getting around, which I find psychologically distorting, so whoever expresses it is enacting their own mental distortion, because they've entered into their own mental loop, which differs completely from the established state of facts.

If an autistic condition and a spectrum condition are confirmed by professionals, there's always someone who steps in and offers their opinion based on established scientific evidence.

I won't go into the genetics aspect; perhaps we get bogged down in complicated discussions, and the people reading this don't have the skills to understand them.

Nor will I go into the issue of the mix between autism and the autism spectrum, with forms ranging from minimal to devastating.

I looked for this video because Professor Luca Pani explains it simply.

Now you can do two things:

1) Don't watch it and remain blindly buried in distorting beliefs that generate illogical reasoning.
2) Watch it, translating the video using automatic translation (search for *English*).

It's not that difficult: should we at least try?

Third icon from the left is the circle with six gears.

It easily explains something difficult to understand.

Because you almost never find a simple explanation online.

I don't care if the professor is Italian; I think he's also a US citizen now because he teaches in your country.

Collaborating: this is very important.

If we collaborate, we can do good for people; collaboration between Italy and the US has always been very important.

Now you have a government that... I can't write it because perhaps it's better if I don't write it.

But to be kind: it doesn't say anything sensible.

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Yes, of course, there are people like the ones you describe, with a very severe level of their autism.

But we also exist at level 2.
And level 1 people, if we refer to a DSM-5, which I don't much appreciate, but that exists and I acknowledge it, as does the ICD-11.
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The spectrum isn't too broad; if anything, it's very narrow, to a low percentage.

If anything, it's narrow.

As logically as it should be.

Very broad is a valid definition only if we take a small portion of individuals—10%—who, given the overall variability, make up a tenth of the total.

Very broad in that respect because it differentiates between case studies, and we autistics aren't the only ones in that category.

It also includes other non-autistic peculiarities.

It absolutely doesn't fall back on neurotypicality!

Whoever claims that being on the autism spectrum is just like that, without logic, is making a false statement. They say so perhaps because they don't know the objective reality, which is part of the studies conducted around the world and is a six-figure number.

Now, it's frustrating to read a personal, denialist opinion or multiple opinions based on one's own mental distortions.

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If a doctor tells you you have cancer, six million doctors tell you the same thing, then what do you do?

You express a doubt: no way.

Just like that: biased.

I find these interactional modes absurd.

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Regarding behavioral causes, as written in the other thread, explain to me how an autistic animal (they exist, eh!) is autistic because it was born that way, but the causes are behavioral.

Let's say two months after birth: from whom does it learn them?
From a panda mom?

Or from Uncle Teddy Bear?

Because every person is impressionable, but if they were born blind, did they learn blindness from a panda mom who is blind or from a panda mom who isn't blind?

Let's compare the two hypotheses: cute animals.

If someone is born blind, they haven't learned to be blind, but are born blind.

If their mother isn't blind, she will transmit it to them telepathically, influencing their thoughts and modifying their brain.

Hypothesis 2 doesn't seem sensible to me, does it?

About what Trump says... um!

There are no demonstrations and there never will be like the ones he claims.

Trump then uses them to our detriment.

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Regarding hiring in a perhaps civilized nation, at least in this respect, those who hire autistic people get tax breaks.

They pay less taxes because they are given work: they will do that job very well.

Because first, a logical evaluation of their skills will be done, and they can be hired for that job and not moved to other positions, not even to other cities.

The purpose of the law in Italy is social inclusion for autistic people who can work.

If we had done what we are now, we would certainly have no autistic disabled people.

Except for those, unfortunately, with very serious limitations related to their autism.

If we act within a few months, even a year, of a child's life, who has been seen by competent specialists and not just any doctor, they will learn enormous social skills and will be able to avoid being disabled.

But politicians influence and create disasters in a field they know nothing about, without even consulting world-renowned specialists.

Trump was the one who, during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, said he was taking this drug:

Trump's drug blocked by the WHO "More risks than benefits"
"The WHO has announced the suspension of trials on the use of hydroxychloroquine for the treatment of Covid-19. One of the drugs on which so much hope had been placed, and which US President Donald Trump recently said he was taking for prophylaxis, is being removed from the list of potentially useful drugs against the coronavirus. Hydroxychloroquine had been approved for off-label use (but never as a prophylaxis), that is, outside its indications, and therefore considered reimbursable already in the early days of the pandemic. The doubts arise from a study published in the Lancet (conducted on nearly 15,000 patients treated with the drug alone or in combination with other drugs and compared with a control group of 81,000 patients), according to which the use of chloroquine and its derivatives in the treatment of Covid-19 can be harmful to the heart and does not yet provide certainty of efficacy against the coronavirus."
Based on medical and scientific evidence of the time, which has never been refuted.

These nice people talk about things that then cause a lot of harm.
And I'm not just referring to President Trump.

If action is taken within a few months, even a year, of a child's life, who has been seen by competent specialists and not just any doctor, he or she will learn enormous social skills and will be able to avoid becoming disabled.

But politicians influence and create disasters in a field they don't know, without even consulting world-renowned specialists.

T

Having read the full article now, I do believe good points were made. I personally don't have an issue with the way we define autism or the official labels used or the spectrum understanding, so no full agreement there, but I think it's a sensible piece overall.

I consider myself socially skilled inwardly but not always giving the correct responses. So I can recognise a social cue rather instinctively but not always know how to respond the appropriate way, like I may say something that makes me seem all nervous or I may be impulsive. Also I tend to overthink things and become anxious that I have failed or annoyed someone.

My social skills are very complex and I judge them on a case-by-case basis. Also they contradict. So I can be here explaining how my social skills are in an extremely long post that probably nobody would read but if they do then there'd be lots of questions like, "but you said you do A, then you say you can't do A", and I'd say "you're right, my social skills mostly lay in the grey areas, there is no fixed structure to my social skills, but I say that all in all I have good social skills for an Aspie."

I'm not one of those friends who you'd get a sudden message from out of the blue saying "being so you're ignoring me I'll ignore you" even though you've only not spoken for about a week, or who'd suddenly message you going "I don't think we should talk any more because you think you support Israel and I don't" or something like that. Instead I prefer to find a mutual ground with people and respect their beliefs. The only thing I go by is whether someone is an a**hole or not. If somebody with different beliefs to my own act all entitled and bitchy with their beliefs then they lose my respect. I can sense the tension in people and if they're not willing to cooperate then I may back away.

If I detect asshole-ry in somebody's behaviour towards me then my trust in them decreases, and when it decreases then that's when paranoia sets in where I think they're talking ill of me behind my back and plotting a vendetta against me. I don't just randomly decide this with anyone, so I'm not someone who you've got to walk on eggshells around, but if I have evident reason to feel like I'm being targeted then I will become anxious and paranoid around them. If I like someone a lot and we get on well but disagree on something then that's not going to make me upset that easily, because the trust is still there enough for me to forgive straight away and move on. But if someone develops a habit of upsetting me, being hostile or whatever towards me, then my trust in them starts to dwindle, and if they start with the mind games and other passive-aggressive behaviours then I'll begin to grow concerned about how they're perceiving me, which triggers anxiety and unease and thinking that they're going to be out to get me, if they've shown that type of behaviour.

I'll stop now.

People must be respected.
This is a cardinal principle from which no intelligent human being can ever escape.

Anyone who doesn't do so is wrong.
But those who insist on personal opinions based on billions of scientific evidence compiled by scientists who claim otherwise are also wrong.

Nor is it fair to write that a person isn't who they say they are.

They really think so.
But it's a thought that must be respected; every post must be respected, every thread where behavior within or outside the autistic range appears and is different from one's own must always be respected.

One doesn't act on bias, but rather adapts to sincerely incontrovertible assessments regarding the autism spectrum.

Then, it's clear that there are possible imprecise diagnoses, but that doesn't mean they're wrong.

There are autistic people who are sociable and very emotionally and deeply sensitive and who understand. Others, however, cannot.
The areas aren't simply black and white, because that could also be distorted thinking.
They are one of the 9 distortions of human thought.

This thread has become too intellectual for my 99 percentile plus brain to cope with!

I guess I'm not really on the autism spectrum then. Now I really feel like crap.

I'm sorry.
But the topic of this thread can't be outlined in a few words.
Also because it wasn't written in a few words.

Writing posts of no relevance makes no sense.
Writing long posts bothers me first and foremost, and I apologize for having written so much.

I'll write much less and no longer in these sections; perhaps I'll go to the pun sections, which are shorter.
9 letters = word. Ah! There! I found it!

If I read a thread like this, which already requires reading the whole thing, including the long posts, what else would we be doing here? To be honest, I think very few people in the forum do this; sometimes you only see a small snippet of the posts in the comments.

Honestly, what's the point of short sentences in lapidary comments?

The point is also: a long comment in a thread is:

1) Useful
2) Understandable
3) Relevant
4) Sensible
5) Relevant
6) Valid and polite
7) No one ever comments on links, but only in their own way sees things that belong to entire DSM and ICD manuals:
Which are: very, very long of work.

Why is this? Because they are from millions of medical-scientific research studies (all over the world: to find published research, the sites I always search are not just Nature, or Western ones, but also others, Indian, Japanese, and so on).

Is it so strange that the whole discussion is always reduced to what we Westerners discover.

And what about the other billions of people, according to those who post very sincerely, the other 6 billion people don't publish a damn thing?

Or do we always make the same mistake of ignoring them?

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You know: it's a bit like when you place yourself at the center of global knowledge.

Well, maybe, just maybe, there are other nations besides ours, and those are completely ignored by those who post.

Why?

Our Western universities dominate research and push everyone else into oblivion.

Pay attention: it happens in every musical field, artistic in general, the best musical ensemble in the world, the Nobel Prizes that go only to our nations, some very well-deserved—see the Japanese, the US, UK, and German researchers, because they have a continuum of scientists spanning centuries.

Other nations, like the US, are to be commended because they truly invest billions of dollars in scientific research, and we owe them a huge thank you.

The fact that they use scientists from other nations to obtain them is sometimes a positive thing, because it makes us understand that the world isn't just us.

I won't mention Italian researchers because I'd be biased.

Between collaborations with the US and the countless scientists we constantly lose to our national detriment because their education costs us millions of euros per person, fortunately, and I always say this, there are states like yours that offer people the chance to realize their dreams of discovery.

In the post above, I linked to one of these: but no one bothered to even look at the images, because from that alone, you can clearly understand what our belongingness consists of, which is not at all broad, but falls on that sine wave in the lower sector, that circle and that's it.

The rest is enormous: we're not there at all.

No one bothers to translate it: just go to automatic translation and you get it in about ten seconds.

No one wants to read long posts (I understand they're stressful), no one wants to watch videos, no one, well, maybe they read a DSM before posting here. No one an ICD, but they post their own personal opinions anyway.

Now, if I were to ask a doctor about treating a tumor, I'd trust his doctrine or I'd say... well! Well, in my opinion, cancer cells...

No: I don't think you'd ever do that.

But when it comes to autism, everyone has their own opinion, without even providing a link to support it, except for the opener or a supporting video.

I included that video precisely because it settles exactly what many of you consider an "in my opinion..."
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Okay, I'll stay out of these logically meaningless squabbles.
I apologize for taking up too much space in the thread and with the opener.

I completely distance myself from empty discussions, and it seems to me that...

No, sorry: I completely distance myself if this is the mechanism of discussion, which is nonexistent.