This is a fabulous PSA:
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As it is now officially Autism Awareness Month and Autism Acceptance Month, here’s a reminder about the difference between the symbols of the puzzle piece versus the infinity symbol:
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Do I look like I have ADHD? Do I look gifted?
What do you think?
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disgruntled-foreign-patriarch
Hence the invention of the Porch
pillarofawesome
ETA:
catchymemes
[Ed. Note: I feel so very seen]
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Pretty telling that at the end of an article on autism and ADHD they have details for the Samaritans…
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Interesting story here. The hypothesis, which I suspect is valid, might offer some suggestions for treatment to change the future course, if caught early enough.
Here is the source article cited in the story:
Although these findings await replication in a sample comprising an even larger number of identical twins in the clinical range of affectation, an overarching interpretation of these results is that the factors responsible for variation in severity within the clinical range diverge from those that are responsible for the heritability of the condition itself . The inference is that when genetic liability for ASD exceeds a clinical threshold, it engenders a marked increase in vulnerability to the effects of non-shared environmental influences, which were observed to exert minimal effects on individuals whose ASD trait burden fell below the threshold for diagnosis.
So, yeah, “further studies required.” But fascinating path to look down. Could, maybe, modifying inflammatory responses in kids with high genetic risk for autism lead to higher function down the road? At what cost? At this point, we cannot answer this. Hope we can, some day.
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That entire article, there was not one reference to autistic girls or women. I’ve read that the co-occurrence of anxiety and ADHD among female autists is estimated to be as high as 70%. So if the ‘experts’ are only now starting to realize that they’ve ignored autism in girls & women all this time, of course they would also have been ignoring the AuADHD connection.
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Interesting that all but one of the people photographed were women, but no recognition of this imbalance was mentioned.
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women and girls have historically (and currently) been underdiagnosed with ASD, for the same reason they are underdiagnosed with pretty much everything else. Women present differently from men. In a medical system that is only just beginning to realize that the default for human is not actually male, and sees women as just defective men, that is a problem. It is why women have been excluded form studies on medication effectiveness, outcome measures, procedural approvals and all that feeds into why women have such dramatically different and poorer outcomes. They are not men, not everything is the same, and we (medicos) ignore that fact at our peril. I related that story of my wife’s MI recently, and the presentation was nothing like it was “supposed” to be. The presentation for ASD that we are all taught is predicated on how boys present. It’s exceptionally frustrating, and I am a guy! I can only partially imagine what it is like for women who have to go through this. All I can do is apologize for my profession and tell y’all we really are trying to do better. It’s a lot of inertia to overcome, but at least it has been recognized, and some of us (especially the younger docs) are being brought up with different training and experience. As one of the olds, I can tell you that overcoming how I was trained as far as gendered differences (we will not even begin to address the racist tropes we were taught) is not an easy task. It is a necessary one, but it is an ongoing battle. I am sorry.
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The joke is:
When are boys generally diagnosed with autism? As toddlers, or within the first year or so of school.
When are girls generally diagnosed with autism? When their sons are.
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The majority of people in the article were women or non-binary.
I’m very personally aware that DSMV describes autistic boys and men, though all the professionals I have met in the field are aware and have training. Perhaps because nearly all of the professionals I have met are women. The whole definition is misogynistic but that is a very strange article to make that point about.
You owe me a coke:
Guess I’ll have to rephrase my first comment on the article:
An article that acts like a connection is only now being made between autism and ADHD despite the fact it’s already been a well known connection for the female half of the autistic population is absolutely based on misogyny.
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You see, Jesus wouldn’t support autistic people, so why should they?
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“Christian” needs more scare quotes.
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