Casual use of Autistic more angst then other conditions?

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The casual use of "Aspie" and "Autistic" has caused widespread distress in our community ranging from annoyance to hate and fear. The general idea is it diminishes and trivializes the what people with clinical level Autism deal with. This is believed to lead to the people not understanding what clinical level autistics go through causing people to believe we use Autism as a crutch, and feeling since our problems are not worse than most we should just suck it up and try harder. It is this narrative that is at least partially behind the ideas that there is considerable over diagnosis and hordes of aspie wannabees.

With awareness, colloquial use of "Autistic" has followed. But from what I see the casual use of other conditions in many cases far outstrips the casual use of "Autistic". Something like "I feel depressed today" is overheard seemingly every day. Similar with "I am soooo OCD". Instead of angst use of these terms casually seems acceptable. But then I do not spend any time reading depression, OCD, ADHD, Bi-Polar forums, and blogs.

Is my perception that the casual use of mental conditions is less of an issue for those with the clinical level of other mental conditions?

I've seen people with OCD get pissed at the casual usage. Depression, too - I've seen suggestions to use "sad" or "down" instead, but I've also seen that refuted, saying "depressed" isn't the same as "clinical depression".

well, yeah. the condition takes its name from the original noun meaning to reduce, pull something to a lower position, lower the level or strength of. there are very clear differences between the usage of "depressed" meaning "suffering from clinical depression", and depressed meaning "pushed down or hindered".

"autistic" as an insult is derived from the name of the condition, and "autism" doesn't really mean anything else. it's a lot harder to separate those two as wholly different concepts sharing a name.

I don't mind casual usage, even though I've yet to experience it IRL. It may seem trivializing, but there is a acceptance of difficulties related to the issue. It seems like it's normalizing some problems to me, and making them more relatable to the average person.

I know, just answering OP's question.

doubly answered.

Once when I was at a place where some people were fooling around and they ended up throwing a chair around. But not in a way that'd put anyone in danger. (It's hard to explain.) Then they started calling each other autistic.

"You're autistic!"
"Here's autism number 1, and autism number 2 ... "
"This is autism number 1 in his natural habitat..."

So it does happen.

I tend to not have emotional connections to words, so I just laughed at the chair throwing.

How is "autistic" as an insult derived from its name? Could someone please explain?

^ i meant to say that...when people use "autistic" as an insult, they are most often comparing it to the condition, or comparing it to a stereotypical trait or interest that those on the spectrum would have.

on the other hand, when someone calls something "depressing", it is a reference to it's very saddening, draining nature, that lowers one's emotions just as a tongue depressor would lower ones tongue. it's not (always) means to be a reference to the condition known as clinical depression, although there most likely exists a lot of overlap.

"depressing" has a meaning outside of "clinical depression". the same can't be said for "autism" yet...though i guess one could make the argument that the current usage of it as an insult is an attempt to forge an alternative meaning.

i guess?!

hopefully this is a little clearer...(perhaps not, heh)

Maybe unlike autism most people understand "I am depressed" means something different then "I have depression". But in my original post I also discussed people saying "I am sooo" and naming medical conditions such as OCD, ADHD, and bi polar.

The use of OCD as a casual term really annoys me, because they don't even use it correctly. Everyone has their little quirks; that's not OCD. People who have witnessed me actually obsessing over something got annoyed and wondered what the hell was wrong with me. But if I cited OCD, they'd probably say, "Oh, that's not OCD," because they don't actually know what it is. And the self-diagnoses are even worse, because people who have those little quirks think that means they have OCD, which trivializes those of us who actually have it. Ugghh.

Thank you for the explanation.