Intellectual Disability = Autism?!
02 Aug 2023, 5:44 am
In the following article that was recently published in "The Free Press" (thefp.com), the author (Jill Escher) claims that her two children (now adults) are profoundly disabled by autism. However, whenever reading articles like this, I think it's important to always ask the question: Do they genuinely have autism? Certainly there exists worldwide a significant number of parents who falsely claim that one or more of their children have autism.
https://www.thefp.com/p/the-autism-surge-lies-conspiracies
https://www.thefp.com/p/lets-talk-more-about-autism-with-jill-escher
Why would a parent falsely claim that his or her child has autism? The answer comes when you try to think like a normal person does. Normal people tend to have an unhealthy obsession with their social status/ranking. Therefore, if you're a normal parent and your child is born with a severe intellectual disability (as defined in the DSM-5), which of the following choices would you prefer?
Choice A: Acknowledge that your child was born with a severe intellectual disability.
Choice B: Convince yourself that your child is NOT intellectually disabled, but rather has severe/profound autism.
I think that for many normal parents, both of the above choices are very unpleasant, but they find it less bad to say that their child has autism than to acknowledge that their child has a severe intellectual disability.
Normal people may tend to think prejudicially, for example, "If the child is a moron, then so are the parents" and "Like father, like son". There exists the common belief that stupidity is inherited from the parents. Thus having an intellectually disabled child may reflect badly upon the parents, thus parents are motivated to deny it, and then latch onto something else, such as severe autism.
I read the description of "Intellectual Disability (Intellectual Developmental Disorder)" in the DSM-5, and it appears to match the descriptions that Jill Escher wrote in her article about autism. Therefore, when she describes examples of people severely disabled by autism, it is possible that those people do NOT have autism, but instead have intellectual disability.
Alternatively, the DSM-5 acknowledges the possibility that autism and intellectual disability can occur together (comorbid) in a person. Therefore it is possible that Jill Escher is describing people who have both intellectual disability and autism, and then she focuses on the behaviors caused by intellectual disability, and she incorrectly claims this disabled behavior is caused by autism.
For example, she wrote:
Quote:
"autism can be so fierce that it is deadly. Each year, dozens of children with autism, with little sense of danger and no common sense, wander from their homes or caregivers and die on roads, or more often, drown in nearby bodies of water."
Autism or intellectual disability? Jill's description matches the description of intellectual disability in the the DSM-5:
Quote:
"There may be associated difficulties with ... assessment of risk. ... Because of a lack of awareness of risk and danger, accidental injury rates may be increased."
A bunch of totally normal children also drown in bodies of water every year. Autism does not mean a risk of drowning. All parents need to carefully supervise their children whenever there is a nearby body of water, regardless of whether the child has a disorder or not.
Next example -- Jill wrote in the article:
Quote:
"Sophie, my cheerful constant companion, has a joyous smile, and unlike Jonny is so highly adaptable that she skis Tahoe’s tallest mountains and will happily chill at any Grateful Dead tribute concert. But like her brother she cannot talk, read, or write, or grasp even the most basic of abstract concepts—not even family or week or birthday. While young ladies her age are applying to college, she’s still not sure how to brush her teeth or put on her socks."
Autism or intellectual disability? Again Jill's description matches the description of intellectual disability in the the DSM-5:
Quote:
"The individual has very limited understanding of symbolic communication in speech of gesture. He or she may understand some simple instructions or gestures. The individual expersses his or her own desires and emotions largely through nonverbal, nonsymbolic communication. The individual enjoys relationships with well-known family members, caretakers, and familiar others"
An awful lot of harm will be done to autism research if non-autistic disorders are packed into the autism spectrum.
ASPartOfMe
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02 Aug 2023, 6:21 am
I am not going to diagnose Jill Escher's children.
Known autistic traits are the same as other conditions.
It is possible to be autistic and have other conditions.
Plenty of if not most allistics have one or several autistic traits. Most Autistics do not have all of the Autistics traits. If you have most of the autistic traits and they result in you not fitting in to a degree that you have difficulty functioning you should be diagnosed as Autistic.
If an intellectually disabled person has enough "impairing" autistic traits that person is autistic. If not they are allistic.
The evidence is clear that a significant amount of people who have enough autistic traits to be diagnosed are intellectually disabled and wander toward the water. I would say they are sub categories of autistics, not allistic.
As you note in other threads the knowledge about this is still evolving and because of that judgments are too often subjective. That does not mean there is not a strong link between autism and ID and wandering towered water.
_________________
Professionally Identified and joined WP August 26, 2013
DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity
“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman
02 Aug 2023, 6:55 am
ASPartOfMe wrote:
I am not going to diagnose Jill Escher's children.
I agree. We don't have sufficient information about her children. The smart thing is to say that we do not know whether or not Jill Escher's children genuinely have autism versus intellectual disability, or one of the various other genetic disorders, or simple hypoxia during birth, etc.
The problem is, a huge number of people will read her article and then just automatically believe that she is describing autistic children, just because she said so. Then they will form conclusions about autism that could be very wrong. It's naive to believe that someone's child has autism just because the parent claims it. Typical parents make many ludicrous or irrational claims.
ASPartOfMe wrote:
The evidence is clear that a significant amount of people who have enough autistic traits to be diagnosed are intellectually disabled and wander toward the water.
In the case of Jill Escher's children, she didn't say whether her own children were attracted to water. We just can't know whether her children have autism, and we can't trust what typical parents say about their children, because typical parents say nutty things frequently.
ASPartOfMe wrote:
If an intellectually disabled person has enough "impairing" autistic traits that person is autistic.
This attitude is both helpful and harmful, depending on which context it is used within. It may be helpful if it's being used to decide which therapies to give to a child in practice. However, this attitude is harmful when autism research is performed because it muddies the waters of autism so much that the resulting giant mess becomes impossibly difficult to comprehend scientifically.
Surely various scientists already identified the cause of autism within the past 30 years, but they were forced to abandon their theory or say "I'm not sure" because the definition of the autism spectrum is extremely muddied by the inclusion of multiple non-autistic disorders.
ASPartOfMe
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02 Aug 2023, 7:27 am
Rotter wrote:
ASPartOfMe wrote:
If an intellectually disabled person has enough "impairing" autistic traits that person is autistic.
This attitude is both helpful and harmful, depending on which context it is used within. It may be helpful if it's being used to decide which therapies to give to a child in practice. However, this attitude is harmful when autism research is performed because it muddies the waters of autism so much that the resulting giant mess becomes impossibly difficult to comprehend scientifically.
Surely various scientists already identified the cause of autism within the past 30 years, but they were forced to abandon their theory or say "I'm not sure" because the definition of the autism spectrum is extremely muddied by the inclusion of multiple non-autistic disorders.
The conventional wisdom is that autism is going to be split up into separate conditions. We don't know that. What I find strange is that people want Autism to be either one condition or split up. There seems to be a reluctance for subcategorizing autism that just does not exist in most areas of life. Take cancer (As an autistic cancer survivor I know they are not the same) we subcategorize them by stage and type. Stage 4 cancer patients do not say Stage 0 cancer patients do not have cancer but something else. Within cancer based on the type and stage, vastly different treatments are used. Pain same thing as being mangled is a whole different experience than a paper cut but they are both referred to as pain. But for some reason, people think of "autism" in binary terms.
_________________
Professionally Identified and joined WP August 26, 2013
DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity
“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman
02 Aug 2023, 7:49 am
ASPartOfMe wrote:
What I find strange is that people want Autism to be either one condition or split up. There seems to be a reluctance for subcategorizing autism that just does not exist in most areas of life.
Unfortunately the science has not yet advanced far enough to prove whether or not the correct solution is to subcategorize autism. It's possible. It's also possible that "Asperger's" and "profound autism" are fully independent conditions that have completely different causes, and that the partial similarity in symptoms is only coincidental.
But yeah, I'd agree that subcategorizing autism should be added to the list of possibilities. We can say that in the future, it is 100% certain that autism will be either split up, or subcategorized, or remain as one
02 Aug 2023, 8:04 am
Rotter wrote:
In the following article that was recently published in "The Free Press" (thefp.com), the author (Jill Escher) claims that her two children (now adults) are profoundly disabled by autism. However, whenever reading articles like this, I think it's important to always ask the question: Do they genuinely have autism? Certainly there exists worldwide a significant number of parents who falsely claim that one or more of their children have autism.
https://www.thefp.com/p/the-autism-surge-lies-conspiracies
https://www.thefp.com/p/lets-talk-more-about-autism-with-jill-escher
Why would a parent falsely claim that his or her child has autism? The answer comes when you try to think like a normal person does. Normal people tend to have an unhealthy obsession with their social status/ranking. Therefore, if you're a normal parent and your child is born with a severe intellectual disability (as defined in the DSM-5), which of the following choices would you prefer?
Choice A: Acknowledge that your child was born with a severe intellectual disability.
Choice B: Convince yourself that your child is NOT intellectually disabled, but rather has severe/profound autism.
I think that for many normal parents, both of the above choices are very unpleasant, but they find it less bad to say that their child has autism than to acknowledge that their child has a severe intellectual disability.
Normal people may tend to think prejudicially, for example, "If the child is a moron, then so are the parents" and "Like father, like son". There exists the common belief that stupidity is inherited from the parents. Thus having an intellectually disabled child may reflect badly upon the parents, thus parents are motivated to deny it, and then latch onto something else, such as severe autism.
I read the description of "Intellectual Disability (Intellectual Developmental Disorder)" in the DSM-5, and it appears to match the descriptions that Jill Escher wrote in her article about autism. Therefore, when she describes examples of people severely disabled by autism, it is possible that those people do NOT have autism, but instead have intellectual disability.
Alternatively, the DSM-5 acknowledges the possibility that autism and intellectual disability can occur together (comorbid) in a person. Therefore it is possible that Jill Escher is describing people who have both intellectual disability and autism, and then she focuses on the behaviors caused by intellectual disability, and she incorrectly claims this disabled behavior is caused by autism.
For example, she wrote:
Autism or intellectual disability? Jill's description matches the description of intellectual disability in the the DSM-5:
A bunch of totally normal children also drown in bodies of water every year. Autism does not mean a risk of drowning. All parents need to carefully supervise their children whenever there is a nearby body of water, regardless of whether the child has a disorder or not.
Next example -- Jill wrote in the article:
Autism or intellectual disability? Again Jill's description matches the description of intellectual disability in the the DSM-5:
An awful lot of harm will be done to autism research if non-autistic disorders are packed into the autism spectrum.
https://www.thefp.com/p/the-autism-surge-lies-conspiracies
https://www.thefp.com/p/lets-talk-more-about-autism-with-jill-escher
Why would a parent falsely claim that his or her child has autism? The answer comes when you try to think like a normal person does. Normal people tend to have an unhealthy obsession with their social status/ranking. Therefore, if you're a normal parent and your child is born with a severe intellectual disability (as defined in the DSM-5), which of the following choices would you prefer?
Choice A: Acknowledge that your child was born with a severe intellectual disability.
Choice B: Convince yourself that your child is NOT intellectually disabled, but rather has severe/profound autism.
I think that for many normal parents, both of the above choices are very unpleasant, but they find it less bad to say that their child has autism than to acknowledge that their child has a severe intellectual disability.
Normal people may tend to think prejudicially, for example, "If the child is a moron, then so are the parents" and "Like father, like son". There exists the common belief that stupidity is inherited from the parents. Thus having an intellectually disabled child may reflect badly upon the parents, thus parents are motivated to deny it, and then latch onto something else, such as severe autism.
I read the description of "Intellectual Disability (Intellectual Developmental Disorder)" in the DSM-5, and it appears to match the descriptions that Jill Escher wrote in her article about autism. Therefore, when she describes examples of people severely disabled by autism, it is possible that those people do NOT have autism, but instead have intellectual disability.
Alternatively, the DSM-5 acknowledges the possibility that autism and intellectual disability can occur together (comorbid) in a person. Therefore it is possible that Jill Escher is describing people who have both intellectual disability and autism, and then she focuses on the behaviors caused by intellectual disability, and she incorrectly claims this disabled behavior is caused by autism.
For example, she wrote:
Quote:
"autism can be so fierce that it is deadly. Each year, dozens of children with autism, with little sense of danger and no common sense, wander from their homes or caregivers and die on roads, or more often, drown in nearby bodies of water."
Autism or intellectual disability? Jill's description matches the description of intellectual disability in the the DSM-5:
Quote:
"There may be associated difficulties with ... assessment of risk. ... Because of a lack of awareness of risk and danger, accidental injury rates may be increased."
A bunch of totally normal children also drown in bodies of water every year. Autism does not mean a risk of drowning. All parents need to carefully supervise their children whenever there is a nearby body of water, regardless of whether the child has a disorder or not.
Next example -- Jill wrote in the article:
Quote:
"Sophie, my cheerful constant companion, has a joyous smile, and unlike Jonny is so highly adaptable that she skis Tahoe’s tallest mountains and will happily chill at any Grateful Dead tribute concert. But like her brother she cannot talk, read, or write, or grasp even the most basic of abstract concepts—not even family or week or birthday. While young ladies her age are applying to college, she’s still not sure how to brush her teeth or put on her socks."
Autism or intellectual disability? Again Jill's description matches the description of intellectual disability in the the DSM-5:
Quote:
"The individual has very limited understanding of symbolic communication in speech of gesture. He or she may understand some simple instructions or gestures. The individual expersses his or her own desires and emotions largely through nonverbal, nonsymbolic communication. The individual enjoys relationships with well-known family members, caretakers, and familiar others"
An awful lot of harm will be done to autism research if non-autistic disorders are packed into the autism spectrum.
While I understand your logic just a few points:-
1. Jill’s children were probably diagnosed professionally and they are not alone there are many people like them all diagnosed by medical professionals
2. I believe this type of autism is ASD 3 or recently named profound autism
3. ID can be diagnosed alone or with other conditions like Down’s syndrome. In fact their is a fairly rare genetic condition the opposite of autism (can’t remember the name) where people are overly sociable but are also ID
4 The same logic can be applied to the top of the autism diagnosis are you and I like Ellon musk in functioning ability ( assuming he’s diagnosed) if not who has the autism him or us?
5 ID seems tied to autism in some way if 56% of autistics have an IQ below 85 around 45% approx ID and around 25% profound autism with IQ below 50, it’s fair to say their is a relationship between many autisms and intelligence
6 Seems like autism itself rather than a stand alone condition is more of a symptom of wider conditions where the autism is part of the package. Like a cough is part of Covid or lung cancer.
I said yesterday in the past science was putting the cart before the horse looking at autism on its own rather than trying to find the edges of each condition.
They are now trying to do this with genetics practically every research article in spectrum magazine is about a particular gene and it’s symptoms if mutations
They are basically mapping things out and the relationships between the genes including what causes the ID
This will take a long time but in the meantime we have ASD because there is nothing else science is at the moment too primitive to find the edges.
It’s unlikely “autism” as a diagnosis will survive decades from now
_________________
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends upon the unreasonable man."
- George Bernie Shaw
02 Aug 2023, 8:50 am
carlos55 wrote:
Jill’s children were probably diagnosed professionally and they are not alone there are many people like them all diagnosed by medical professionals
Too many parents "shop around" until they receive the diagnosis that they want to hear. In Jill's case, I can't say what happened (I don't have sufficient info), but I can say with certainty that some percentage of parents just continue getting another second opinion and another until they find a doctor who does what the parent wants.
Too many doctors just want to get paid, and if a parent insists that he/she wants a particular diagnosis, then it's easy money to simply give the parent the diagnosis that he/she wants. It's not always fraudulent. Sometimes it's just coincidentally a difference of opinion -- one doctor believes it's intellectual disability, whereas another believes it's autism. Such difference of opinion/diagnosis happens frequently because autism is currently a subjective and poorly defined diagnosis. Thus it's easy for parents to get their preferred diagnosis.
People frequently delude themselves. Thus if the first doctor says, "It's a case of intellectual disability", then the parent says, "Such a stupid doctor! He's obviously incompetent. We must go and visit a different doctor."
Shockingly, some parents do something even worse than shopping around. The doctor says, for example, "It might be autism", and then the parent goes home and says, "My child was diagnosed with autism. The doctor confirmed it. He said it's clearly autism. All the signs are there."
carlos55 wrote:
The same logic can be applied to the top of the autism diagnosis are you and I like Ellon musk in functioning ability ( assuming he’s diagnosed) if not who has the autism him or us?
Right. That's why I prefer to say I'm neurodivergent -- because then I can't be wrong. Unfortunately, anytime anyone says "I have autism", they can't really know if it's true because the state of the autism science is such a mess currently. The name "WrongPlanet" is a smart choice because it cannot suddenly become incorrect in the future, whereas if it was "AutismPlanet" or "AspiePlanet", it could be proven incorrect in future.
carlos55 wrote:
ID seems tied to autism in some way if 56% of autistics have an IQ below 85 around 45% approx ID and around 25% profound autism with IQ below 50, it’s fair to say their is a relationship between many autisms and intelligence
No, the relationship between autism and intelligence is very unclear. Standard IQ tests are a wildly misleading way of measuring the intelligence of people, and even more misleading when trying to measure an autistic child. Supposedly an IQ test gives a concrete result, but no, in reality a person's IQ rises and rises the more he/she practises IQ tests and learns how to ace them. The rising IQ is the same as the rising grades in school when practicing.
In the section on Intellectual Disability, the DSM-5 says:
Quote:
"The various levels of severity are defined on the basis of adaptive functioning, and not IQ scores, because it is adaptive functioning that determines the level of supports required. Moreover, IQ measures are less valid in the lower end of the IQ range."
That's a professional way of saying that IQ tests are BS.
carlos55 wrote:
It’s unlikely “autism” as a diagnosis will survive decades from now
I agree.
02 Aug 2023, 9:55 am
carlos55 wrote:
ID seems tied to autism in some way
Sometimes the parents cause the Intellectual Disability in their own child. There is some kind of defective switch in the brains of a significant percentage of NT people, and this defective switch causes them to stop caring for their child when the child receives a diagnosis such as autism, or Down's syndrome, etc.
Yes, these parents do the exact opposite of what a parent should do when their child receives such a diagnosis. Instead of increasing the amount of care, assistance, and lessons that they give to the child, they reduce the care/assistance to the bare minimum required to keep the child alive. This can cause intellectual disability.
Wild animals do the same thing but even worse. When the mother notices that her baby looks or behaves differently (or is merely the runt of the litter sometimes), the mother may stop caring for that baby entirely. The baby dies from starvation. Sometimes the mother kills the unusual baby immediately and eats it or removes it from the nest/den.
Obviously humans don't kill and eat their own babies when their child receives a diagnosis such as autism, or Down's syndrome, etc, because that's illegal. In the past, before laws existed, humans did kill their babies just for being different, in the same manner as wild animals do, because humans are animals. Nowadays X% of parents respond by reducing the care to the bare minimum that will keep the child alive.
How does this child abuse/neglect cause intellectual disability in a child with autism? There are multiple ways of it happening. One of the ways is a severe vitamin B12 deficiency, which is known to cause intellectual disability. A well-known trait of autistic children is being extremely fussy with food (much more fussy than the usual fussiness of children). This restricted eating habit can lead to a severe B12 deficiency or other deficiency that leads to intellectual disability.
This is especially likely to happen when the parent stopped caring for the child as soon as the child received the diagnosis. For example, perhaps a particular autistic child becomes fixated with white bread and refuses to eat anything other than white bread. A responsible parent would ask the doctor to do a blood test to check for vitamin deficiencies, and then prescribe suitable products to rectify these deficiencies. Sadly, not all parents do this. Thus the loving-yet-uncaring parent permits the autistic child to eat nothing other than bread or one single food long-term, which eventually leads to intellectual disability.
It's tricky to identify the percentage of parents who immediately stop caring for their child when diagnosed. These parents don't present as child abusers at all. They insist that they love their child, and they really believe that they do. Nevertheless they neglect their "unusual" child despite genuinely believing in their love for their child.
This terrible behavior is caused by an ancient part of the brain that also exists in wild animals as I said above. It's also the main trigger of the hate, abuse, and discrimination that is often directed at people with a disability or a significant difference.
Sadly, the percentage of normal parents who are terrible parents is much higher than initially expected.
02 Aug 2023, 11:53 am
Rotter wrote:
carlos55 wrote:
Jill’s children were probably diagnosed professionally and they are not alone there are many people like them all diagnosed by medical professionals
Too many parents "shop around" until they receive the diagnosis that they want to hear. In Jill's case, I can't say what happened (I don't have sufficient info), but I can say with certainty that some percentage of parents just continue getting another second opinion and another until they find a doctor who does what the parent wants.
Too many doctors just want to get paid, and if a parent insists that he/she wants a particular diagnosis, then it's easy money to simply give the parent the diagnosis that he/she wants. It's not always fraudulent. Sometimes it's just coincidentally a difference of opinion -- one doctor believes it's intellectual disability, whereas another believes it's autism. Such difference of opinion/diagnosis happens frequently because autism is currently a subjective and poorly defined diagnosis. Thus it's easy for parents to get their preferred diagnosis.
People frequently delude themselves. Thus if the first doctor says, "It's a case of intellectual disability", then the parent says, "Such a stupid doctor! He's obviously incompetent. We must go and visit a different doctor."
Shockingly, some parents do something even worse than shopping around. The doctor says, for example, "It might be autism", and then the parent goes home and says, "My child was diagnosed with autism. The doctor confirmed it. He said it's clearly autism. All the signs are there."
carlos55 wrote:
The same logic can be applied to the top of the autism diagnosis are you and I like Ellon musk in functioning ability ( assuming he’s diagnosed) if not who has the autism him or us?
Right. That's why I prefer to say I'm neurodivergent -- because then I can't be wrong. Unfortunately, anytime anyone says "I have autism", they can't really know if it's true because the state of the autism science is such a mess currently. The name "WrongPlanet" is a smart choice because it cannot suddenly become incorrect in the future, whereas if it was "AutismPlanet" or "AspiePlanet", it could be proven incorrect in future.
carlos55 wrote:
ID seems tied to autism in some way if 56% of autistics have an IQ below 85 around 45% approx ID and around 25% profound autism with IQ below 50, it’s fair to say their is a relationship between many autisms and intelligence
No, the relationship between autism and intelligence is very unclear. Standard IQ tests are a wildly misleading way of measuring the intelligence of people, and even more misleading when trying to measure an autistic child. Supposedly an IQ test gives a concrete result, but no, in reality a person's IQ rises and rises the more he/she practises IQ tests and learns how to ace them. The rising IQ is the same as the rising grades in school when practicing.
In the section on Intellectual Disability, the DSM-5 says:
Quote:
"The various levels of severity are defined on the basis of adaptive functioning, and not IQ scores, because it is adaptive functioning that determines the level of supports required. Moreover, IQ measures are less valid in the lower end of the IQ range."
That's a professional way of saying that IQ tests are BS.
carlos55 wrote:
It’s unlikely “autism” as a diagnosis will survive decades from now
I agree.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Quote:
Too many parents "shop around" until they receive the diagnosis that they want to hear. In Jill's case, I can't say what happened (I don't have sufficient info), but I can say with certainty that some percentage of parents just continue getting another second opinion and another until they find a doctor who does what the parent wants.
Too many doctors just want to get paid, and if a parent insists that he/she wants a particular diagnosis, then it's easy money to simply give the parent the diagnosis that he/she wants. It's not always fraudulent. Sometimes it's just coincidentally a difference of opinion -- one doctor believes it's intellectual disability, whereas another believes it's autism. Such difference of opinion/diagnosis happens frequently because autism is currently a subjective and poorly defined diagnosis. Thus it's easy for parents to get their preferred diagnosis.
People frequently delude themselves. Thus if the first doctor says, "It's a case of intellectual disability", then the parent says, "Such a stupid doctor! He's obviously incompetent. We must go and visit a different doctor."
Shockingly, some parents do something even worse than shopping around. The doctor says, for example, "It might be autism", and then the parent goes home and says, "My child was diagnosed with autism. The doctor confirmed it. He said it's clearly autism. All the signs are there."
Too many doctors just want to get paid, and if a parent insists that he/she wants a particular diagnosis, then it's easy money to simply give the parent the diagnosis that he/she wants. It's not always fraudulent. Sometimes it's just coincidentally a difference of opinion -- one doctor believes it's intellectual disability, whereas another believes it's autism. Such difference of opinion/diagnosis happens frequently because autism is currently a subjective and poorly defined diagnosis. Thus it's easy for parents to get their preferred diagnosis.
People frequently delude themselves. Thus if the first doctor says, "It's a case of intellectual disability", then the parent says, "Such a stupid doctor! He's obviously incompetent. We must go and visit a different doctor."
Shockingly, some parents do something even worse than shopping around. The doctor says, for example, "It might be autism", and then the parent goes home and says, "My child was diagnosed with autism. The doctor confirmed it. He said it's clearly autism. All the signs are there."
I'm not saying that doesn't happen especially in the US with private healthcare. Such a thing is unlikely to happen in the UK under the NHS or any other country that has a similar system. Here its all centralised you get diagnosed and that's it.
Private diagnosis is not officially recognised here when it comes to requesting help, welfare etc.. You have to be assessed by an NHS clinic to get anything and there`s no shopping around.
Quote:
In Jill's case, I can't say what happened
I`m not sure why you single out Jill, even if she did "shop around" which i don't really believe she did, what about the other 10 million autistics with ID (made up no.) , did all their parents shop around? unlikely as as above would really only be applicable in the US and stats for Profound autism appear to be roughly the same % in all countries. If it wasn't you would certainly be hearing about it.
Quote:
Right. That's why I prefer to say I'm neurodivergent -- because then I can't be wrong. Unfortunately, anytime anyone says "I have autism", they can't really know if it's true because the state of the autism science is such a mess currently. The name "WrongPlanet" is a smart choice because it cannot suddenly become incorrect in the future, whereas if it was "AutismPlanet" or "AspiePlanet", it could be proven incorrect in future.
I understand and you are probably correct but people usually want a name or diagnosis "neurodivergent" can mean lots of things inc ADHD.
Quote:
No, the relationship between autism and intelligence is very unclear. Standard IQ tests are a wildly misleading way of measuring the intelligence of people, and even more misleading when trying to measure an autistic child. Supposedly an IQ test gives a concrete result, but no, in reality a person's IQ rises and rises the more he/she practises IQ tests and learns how to ace them. The rising IQ is the same as the rising grades in school when practicing.
In the section on Intellectual Disability, the DSM-5 says:
That's a professional way of saying that IQ tests are BS.
In the section on Intellectual Disability, the DSM-5 says:
Quote:
"The various levels of severity are defined on the basis of adaptive functioning, and not IQ scores, because it is adaptive functioning that determines the level of supports required. Moreover, IQ measures are less valid in the lower end of the IQ range."
That's a professional way of saying that IQ tests are BS.
Associations are usually made by frequency, smoking is associated with lung cancer because so many smokers got it. Yes autism is complicated & lots of different genes are involved some leading to ID others not but if approx 45% of autistic people are ID then that's quite a solid association.
Quote:
That's a professional way of saying that IQ tests are BS.
Yes & No two people in the normal range, one 95 the other 110, or maybe borderline range with different scores IQ is not the whole story of intelligence.
I re-wrote this bit as what i said was a bit confusing. I`m not an expert on this but It appears those with ID don't take IQ tests i.e what's the odd one out? what pattern is next etc..
In fact they are not IQ tests at all rather just a picture of someone`s living skills & basic maths & literacy which is why they have such wide ranges
i.e
Quote:
Some difficulty learning reading, writing, and math, but can learn up to about the 6th-grade level by late adolescence
Challenges making plans and managing money
Challenges making plans and managing money
Its a rough picture of where someone is at following an assessment that says that persons intelligence ability is impaired and within a range because they have these life skills but not those above. If you look at the link below you`ll see the ranges are wide 36–51 moderate or 20–35 severe.
So someone would likely get 36-51 range, rather than 38 or 49, the numbers are probably only used to fit into the overall IQ spectrum.
I think its fair to say adults with ID are not secret geniuses that need to be unlocked
https://www.msdmanuals.com/en-gb/home/m ... disability
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"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends upon the unreasonable man."
- George Bernie Shaw
02 Aug 2023, 2:53 pm
It is strange...
Why so many intellectual disability associations with autism and something similar with Down Syndrome, yet not with, say, ADHD and learning disability?..
Why so hung up over blaming autism for it's comorbidities?
Autism is known to be a developmental disorder. It's not full stop or is tied to a upper limit cap like how developmental disability works.
But how much of autism is a developmental disability like how intellectual disability is a developmental disability?
I've even met a 50+ year old who is perpetually developmentally a 5 year old -- and is blatantly not autistic by any means. At all.
Executive dysfunction be damned because it's entirely irrelevant -- she's a 5 year old in a 50 year old body and very much acts like and socialize like 5 year old NT; except that's not what an NT look like but it certainly that's how an allistic would definitely look like.
Then I've meet varying autistics.
Many of them change and fluctuate. Those without intellectual disability fluctuates in development, save for their specific comorbidities.
There's always this imbalance and fluctuations in autism as they age. Something just progress, something just lags, something just lost.
If there's a stop or a cap, it's in a different direction or a reason altogether which makes us different from most allistics; this is also how IQ tests can misinterpret autistics.
It's not the same as intellectual disability where there's a sense of even-ness to a person's development.
Or that of a full stop of any developmental area, yet it is still the same direction and trajectory of how would an allistic go.
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02 Aug 2023, 6:23 pm
carlos55 wrote:
You have to be assessed by an NHS clinic to get anything and there`s no shopping around.
Nonsense. Parents in the UK can and do shop around. The UK NHS has a thing called the "Right to Choose".
carlos55 wrote:
Private diagnosis is not officially recognised here when it comes to requesting help, welfare etc..
Private diagnosis is officially recognized in the UK for things such as treatment, therapy, and medication. For example, here's a webpage on the topic of private patients: https://psychiatry-uk.com/private-patients/
I also provided an example of how parents just simply say their child was diagnosed with autism even when he/she was not.
carlos55 wrote:
I`m not sure why you single out Jill,
She is the author of the article, obviously. Anyway I didn't single her out. My original message clearly said "parents" in general. For example, I wrote "many normal parents" in my original message. That's the opposite of singling someone out.
Last edited by Rotter on 02 Aug 2023, 7:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
02 Aug 2023, 7:01 pm
Edna3362 wrote:
It is strange... Why so many intellectual disability associations with autism and something similar with Down Syndrome, yet not with, say, ADHD and learning disability?
That's a very good question! The answer is surely that particular conditions such as autism and Down's syndrome trigger more prejudice/discrimination than particular other conditions such as ADHD, dyslexia, etc.
Edna3362 wrote:
Why so hung up over blaming autism for it's comorbidities?
Exactly! A bunch of people practice the harmful habit of blaming autism and defining autism according to non-autistic disorders such as intellectual disability as a comorbidity.
Edna3362 wrote:
Autism is known to be a developmental disorder. It's not full stop or is tied to a upper limit cap like how developmental disability works. ... There's always this imbalance and fluctuations in autism as they age.
Good point. Complete loss of autism diagnosis is also surprisingly common. As a rough estimate, approximately one third of children completely lose their autism diagnosis later in their life. The fact that so many children are allegedly autistic and then later not autistic anymore... Again this reveals that it's naive to automatically believe a parent who claims that his/her child has autism.
Even worse, it's naive to automatically believe the first doctor who claims that a child has autism. Misdiagnosis of autism happens so frequently that it is necessary to get multiple opinions from different doctors. Unfortunately this also contributes to shopping around to get the desired diagnosis.
Edna3362 wrote:
I've even met a 50+ year old who is perpetually developmentally a 5 year old -- and is blatantly not autistic by any means. At all.
Yes, there are multiple things that can cause intellectual disability unrelated to autism. Too many of these non-autistic people with an intellectual disability have been falsely labelled as autistic. This makes autism research impossibly difficult to conduct, when the autism statistics are ruined by the inclusion of a bunch of people with disorders other than autism.
02 Aug 2023, 8:07 pm
Rotter wrote:
ASPartOfMe wrote:
What I find strange is that people want Autism to be either one condition or split up. There seems to be a reluctance for subcategorizing autism that just does not exist in most areas of life.
Unfortunately the science has not yet advanced far enough to prove whether or not the correct solution is to subcategorize autism. It's possible. It's also possible that "Asperger's" and "profound autism" are fully independent conditions that have completely different causes, and that the partial similarity in symptoms is only coincidental.
But yeah, I'd agree that subcategorizing autism should be added to the list of possibilities. We can say that in the future, it is 100% certain that autism will be either split up, or subcategorized, or remain as one
Subcategories is likely to be the ultimate end here, as these conditions appear to be very much intermingled. Either because they identify enough genetic factors to dictate how the categorization should be done or there's enough results from brain scan studies to tell us that there are reasonable ways of grouping the symptoms into different types.
The situation we have right now is probably the worst of all worlds, where they narrowed it with respect to the autistic subpopulations with the least ability to argue for our case being excluded from any recognized diagnosis and relying on grandfathering people in to avoid public outrage. And lumped a bunch of people together in a way that doesn't lend itself well to increasing the general awareness of what it's like to be autistic or make it easier for researchers to study.
02 Aug 2023, 8:22 pm
Edna3362 wrote:
It is strange...
Why so many intellectual disability associations with autism and something similar with Down Syndrome, yet not with, say, ADHD and learning disability?..
Why so many intellectual disability associations with autism and something similar with Down Syndrome, yet not with, say, ADHD and learning disability?..
By definition if somebody isn't at least roughly normal intelligence, they can't have a learning disability. If they aren't at least that intelligent, then it has to be something else. ADHD is kind of a tough call in that regard as it's likely to be reclassified in the future as being a specific presentation of autism.
Edna3362 wrote:
Why so hung up over blaming autism for it's comorbidities?
Autism is known to be a developmental disorder. It's not full stop or is tied to a upper limit cap like how developmental disability works.
But how much of autism is a developmental disability like how intellectual disability is a developmental disability?
I've even met a 50+ year old who is perpetually developmentally a 5 year old -- and is blatantly not autistic by any means. At all.
Executive dysfunction be damned because it's entirely irrelevant -- she's a 5 year old in a 50 year old body and very much acts like and socialize like 5 year old NT; except that's not what an NT look like but it certainly that's how an allistic would definitely look like.
Autism is known to be a developmental disorder. It's not full stop or is tied to a upper limit cap like how developmental disability works.
But how much of autism is a developmental disability like how intellectual disability is a developmental disability?
I've even met a 50+ year old who is perpetually developmentally a 5 year old -- and is blatantly not autistic by any means. At all.
Executive dysfunction be damned because it's entirely irrelevant -- she's a 5 year old in a 50 year old body and very much acts like and socialize like 5 year old NT; except that's not what an NT look like but it certainly that's how an allistic would definitely look like.
I'm still looking into it, but with ADHD, the emotional regulation issues are related to the ability to keep relevant information in mind while also being able to keep the emotions in mind at the same time. It's not a particularly large leap to suggest that the same effect may apply to autistic people as well where the subconscious mind is actually fine with a lot of this stuff, there's just an access issue to the higher levels of the brain.
02 Aug 2023, 8:44 pm
MatchboxVagabond wrote:
The situation we have right now is probably the worst of all worlds, where they narrowed it with respect to the autistic subpopulations with the least ability to argue for our case being excluded from any recognized diagnosis and relying on grandfathering people in to avoid public outrage. And lumped a bunch of people together in a way that doesn't lend itself well to increasing the general awareness of what it's like to be autistic or make it easier for researchers to study.
That happened because NT people most commonly make their decisions based on social/tribal reasoning instead of logic, rationality, and scientific thinking. As you said, "to avoid public outrage". That's an example of a social reason. Very social people tend to be rather anti-social (tribal) in practice.
MatchboxVagabond wrote:
ADHD is kind of a tough call in that regard as it's likely to be reclassified in the future as being a specific presentation of autism.
Yes, in the near future, most disorders are likely to be reclassified as being part of the autism spectrum. I've already encountered multiple people who talk and behave as if the word "autism" means "anyone who is different" or "anyone who has a non-physical disability" or "anyone who we dislike".
02 Aug 2023, 9:52 pm
Rotter wrote:
MatchboxVagabond wrote:
The situation we have right now is probably the worst of all worlds, where they narrowed it with respect to the autistic subpopulations with the least ability to argue for our case being excluded from any recognized diagnosis and relying on grandfathering people in to avoid public outrage. And lumped a bunch of people together in a way that doesn't lend itself well to increasing the general awareness of what it's like to be autistic or make it easier for researchers to study.
That happened because NT people most commonly make their decisions based on social/tribal reasoning instead of logic, rationality, and scientific thinking. As you said, "to avoid public outrage". That's an example of a social reason. Very social people tend to be rather anti-social (tribal) in practice.
Likely and fat lot of good it did for them. Ignoring the science resulted in them losing funding. As well it should, some of the choices were just absolutely bizarre. The ones related to the ASD diagnoses were bad, but at least there isn't as much evidence as there was to support depression characterized by a lack of enjoying enjoyable tasks with a lack of ability to pursue normally enjoyable tasks as those are known to use different circuits in the brain and require somewhat different treatment options.
Rotter wrote:
MatchboxVagabond wrote:
ADHD is kind of a tough call in that regard as it's likely to be reclassified in the future as being a specific presentation of autism.
Yes, in the near future, most disorders are likely to be reclassified as being part of the autism spectrum. I've already encountered multiple people who talk and behave as if the word "autism" means "anyone who is different" or "anyone who has a non-physical disability" or "anyone who we dislike".
Which is effectively what we used to have autism was more or less just various types of persistent developmental disorders and there was a diagnosis for ones which didn't fit in the more specific categories, as in atypical autism. This was a bit of a Chesterton's Fence situation where they shouldn't have made the change without specific research to back it and without consideration for those that would no longer be diagnosable due to the change. It seems very strange to me personally, that there's a consideration for those that are otherwise autistic, but don't engage in the stereotyped motions and speech, but absolutely nothing for those that are more impacted by sensory processing issues. There is no provision for it in the DSM and it's strongly recommended not to hand out an SPD diagnosis independent of one of the related diagnoses. In those cases, the only real option is schizoid personality disorder from what I can tell, but the movement on that one seems to be to create a gap where the autistic point of that triangle is and to treat it more as a schizophrenia spectrum disorder despite it often being nigh impossible to distinguish from autism.
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