How typical is neuro"typical" really?

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drwho222
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22 Sep 2017, 11:49 am

I've been wondering this for awhile. How common is the NT phenotype really? How many not wired this way have simply not been diagnosed, discovered, counted, recognized, etc?

This is mostly because I am also part of another group that until recently I also believed to be a small minority worldwide, namely Atheists. We Americans have the very unfortunate tendency to believe that the way things are in the USA is the way things are worldwide. Hence I believed that Atheists, Agnostics, and others who otherwise identify as not believing in a magical sky guy were a tiny minority. Online research has shown me that worldwide there are roughly a BILLION of us who identify as Atheist or otherwise not religious. And we are more common in the USA than I ever thought too. In terms of raw numbers we are outmatched only by Christians and Muslims, and in terms of evenness of worldwide distribution we are UNMATCHED. There are many religions still seen as "major world religions" that are all but non existent outside a small corner of the world, and I'd include even Hinduism in this. And there are likely many more of us in hiding, because of countries like Saudi where you can be in legal trouble for not accepting the prevailing sky fairy mythology.



Voxish
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22 Sep 2017, 1:33 pm

Extremely common. Neurotypical is just that, typical.

We talk about the predominate neurotype when we talk about the vast majority of the human race.


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Joe90
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22 Sep 2017, 1:44 pm

I am not up on religion but I do know about the term "neurotypical".
The way I see it, neurotypicals are the majority. There are a lot of brain disorders out there but the more common something is among humans, the more it is likely to fall into the neurotypical category. Things like autism, ADHD, Schitzephrenia, Bipolar, Fragile-X, Down's syndrome, Mental Retardation, dementia, etc, fall into the non-neurotypical category. But things like depression, anxiety, social anxiety, etc, are more common among the human population, so a person with depression or something like that can still be neurotypical.

I suppose everyone here has their own definition of neurotypical though. But I don't see why only autistics should be put in another group and the remaining 99% of humans classed as "normal", even those that are less mentally able than a high-functioning autistic. Yes you have to draw the line somewhere, otherwise the term "neurotypical" would be meaningless, but I don't believe the line should be drawn under only autistics.


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