Really? I don’t understand the logic of that. Is it just fear?
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I was applying for Income Protection insurance, as was very strongly suggested when we got our mortgage. The insurance forms are very clear about leaving anything out, and they specifically ask for any preexisting conditions, physical, mental, developmental, or psychosocial. So I was required by law to inform them of my Aspergers Dx (if I didn’t have an official Dx, then I don’t think I’m required to tell them about suspicions). And once I did, and they sent back the paperwork once they’d gone over it and I had to call them up and get them to fix where they’d say I have Schizophrenia and put it back to ASD, they sat on it for a week or so, and replied with boilerplate along the lines of “You have autism so you’re too much of a risk and we won’t cover you.”
Never mind that I’d already been in the same employment for more than ten years by then, and I’ve been in it for almost ten years since.
Any Autism diagnosis is not met with subtlety or nuance, and in my experience it’s a hard “no” from insurance, because they don’t want to have to care about nuance, and they are legally allowed to discriminate. As far as their profit levels go, there is a statistically higher chance of various payout-able outcomes, and they’re safer just not bothering, and they’re allowed to not bother, so they don’t.
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Oh geez. I didn’t even think about that type of insurance. Without the ACA – ‘Obamacare’ – I wouldn’t have health insurance, and the only other kinds I could think of were home insurance (whether owned or rented), life insurance (and I don’t think there’s a higher likelihood of suicide, which often isn’t covered anyway), and car insurance.
Were you able to get coverage from another company?
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We ended up not going for income insurance at all.
Which I think was a bet that paid off in our favour, with ten years of hindsight and a fair bit of good luck.
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They at least did include this:
They said the sharp rise in autism rates is largely due to greater awareness, better diagnosis tools and a broader definition of autism. Researchers also noted the greatest increases in diagnoses were amongst affluent children, concluding that children in underserved communities are not getting the same access to medical resources.
But the headline will be all way too many people read, and there will be wails of “vaccine damaged kids” and “masks cause autism.” I post this so those here may be prepared when the caterwauling begins.
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Don’t forget the Tylenol
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The conflict-of-interest claims stem from the retracted papers using assessment batteries that Matson developed, which are sold by Disability Consultants, LLC, a business registered in the state of Louisiana to Matson’s wife, Deann Matson. This tie was not revealed in any of the 23 papers.
Yikes.
Matson says that at the time, he was not aware he needed the conflict-of-interest statement.
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Here is an analysis by an autistic person of the show Don’t Hug Me, I’m Scared…
Very interesting! But she discusses trauma she suffered a bit, so keep that in mind.
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This sounded interesting. A study on how different people have different ways of perceiving the world. I was reading the article and they mention how some people don’t have mental images and it blew my mind. Part of the study is open to the public via website. You can interact with their various tests. I haven’t done it but it certainly looks very pretty
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An autist reviews what may be the very first movie to have a character explicitly identified as autistic, the, uh… “crime drama musical film” Change of Habit, starring … (checks notes) Elvis Presley as a doctor? and… (squints harder) Mary Tyler Moore as a nun?
(CW: the film itself offends on just about every level possible; the article goes into more specifics.)
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TL;DR: If you advertise hither and yon about how inclusive you are for having a “Sensory Safe Room”, maybe be less obvious about not letting anyone actually use it.
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Substantial evidence shows that autistic adults are at an elevated risk for suicide. Being socially connected helps protect against suicidal thoughts and behaviors in the general population but has been overlooked as a protective factor for autistic people. This is likely due to the unfortunate misconception that autistic people are uninterested in social interaction — an idea known as the social motivation theory of autism.
The social motivation theory lacks empirical support. Recent findings from our lab, from a study of 100 autistic adults and 100 non-autistic adults, suggest that autistic adults actually have greater levels of desire and motivation to connect with others than do non-autistic adults. Autistic adults also have a similar number of social connections as non-autistic adults, according to a 2021 study of 184 people who self-reported an autism diagnosis. And more than three-quarters of those study participants report feelings of social identification with at least one social group.
In other words, the social motivation theory likely does not apply to most autistic people, let alone all of them. Autistic adults cannot be assumed to have fewer social connections — or less desire to have social connections. Our field must work to dismantle these damaging and inaccurate notions and develop suicide interventions that promote social connection for autistic people.
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… Like many people who grew up experiencing the world differently to mainstream Australians, I was thrilled last Thursday to read Black Inc.’s announcement of a new anthology, to be edited by Osher Gunsberg: “Growing up Neurodivergent in Australia: Call for submissions.”
Finally, I thought, after 25 years of the neurodiversity movement, founded by Australian sociologist Judy Singer, its birth country would have an anthology representing the range of our experiences.
But I was dismayed to read, in the first paragraph of the callout, that contributors were required to “have been diagnosed as neurodivergent”. This might sound like a reasonable request, but it fails to account for what the neurodivergent community is, what diagnosis is, and what has been expected of previous contributors to the Growing Up series.
Oh yay, another instance of well-meaning people trying to “help” in such a way as to ensure that nothing can actually happen.
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And now for something completely different.
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