Why is autism suddenly something trendy and quirky?

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But you still can, just under the ICD and not the DSM, right?

I think as the diagnostic criteria has broadened, more people actually do meet the criteria. I wonder if there will come a time when "Aspergers" (or some other new term...who knows) will become thought of as a personality type as opposed to a disorder- similar to how anyone can identify themselves as "extroverted" or "introverted". That seems to be the direction this is moving. But I think "autism" (or other term) will get back its disorder status. I'm imagining this a bit like the difference between being shy and being socially anxious. Shyness is not a disorder that must be diagnosed, but social anxiety disorder is. There was a study a while ago that showed differences in the brains of folks with an Aspergers diagnosis and folks with a classic autism diagnosis. And there is further research now into "hundreds of autism". I think these types of discoveries will lead to a personality autism and a disorder autism. There will have to remain an autism DISORDER because it clearly is for a portion of what is now the autism spectrum. But, there is also a portion of the spectrum of people whose main problems are primarily caused by society (similar to introversion). Not sure if I'm explaining this well- it makes sense in my head! So in other words, those people who you think are "posing" may actually sort of meet the criteria. That said, nerds are cool now apparently! i don't know what sparked that change either (not that they shouldn't be).

I haven't seen any of those T-shirts or bumper stickers that speak positively about autism. In fact, I thought most NTs think autistic people are stupid, since that's what they say all the time online and it makes me furious.

Most people where I live have no real knowledge Asperger's even exists, and the next time I see the local Autistic society fundraising at the mall with their puzzle ribbon logo, I'm going to give them a piece of my mind - no pun intended.

I think autism may be trendy for some people wanting to find personal and group identity.
Possibly for others, it can be blamed for things that went wrong in life or one's own perceived failures.
I think self-diagnosing autism has increased beyond a healthy level of people recognizing their autistic traits and getting assessed to better deal with impairments.

Yes, I agree. A while back, it seemed that every adult child was blaming their abusive parents for every problem the adult child had, from criminal behavior to failed marriages to bad credit ratings.

Too many people who can get professional assessment seem to stop at self-assessment and go no further.

I agree here. For example, on Reddit, /r/aspergers has a reputation for being full of self-diagnosed fakers. It's something that I see frequently brought up in other subreddits. A while back /r/aspergers had a poll of subscribers. As much as 80% of respondents marked that they had been professionally diagnosed with ASD, Asperger's, or PDD-NOS, and many of the ones who weren't already diagnosed were seeking one.

People see a handful of individuals who are just seeking attention and somehow extrapolate that as representative of a large portion of the community. Yeah, I'm pretty frustrated with the handful of people that create that stereotype in the beginning. But I'm a lot more angry with the people who perpetuate that as a much much broader stereotype, all because they see it as some sort of duty to out all the "fakers" they can find. The witch hunts to expose fakers do a lot more damage to actual autistic people than the fakers (a lot of whom are just misguided more than anything) ever do themselves.

THIS IS EXACTLY WHY I WROTE THIS THREAD viewtopic.php?t=290326

This topic makes me rather uncomfortable. How can you tell someone is of "sound mind" on the internet? Many of you on here express yourselves articulately and clearly and thus appear to be of "sound mind", but aspergers and autism doesn't quite work like that. The spectrum varies from those who simply have no way of interpreting and expressing verbal/nonverbal communication (for example) and those who need more time or are slower at communicating effectively. If you are able to communicate in writing, you are able to conceal the discrepancy between the relative fluency of your thought processes and the way in which you perform and express/externalise yourself to others in *real time*.

With my many years of experiencing crap professionals, I beg to differ on this point. I know a lot of people who have been misdiagnosed. When I first went in at age 14, the psych told me I was just a spoiled brat. I got traded off to another who said I was ADD, major depression and OCD. Later, they said I wasn't ADD and have psychotic intrusive thoughts, then saying I'm on the spectrum but they don't want to label me. Each one disagrees with the previous one, except on the depression. However, many have tried to pass off actual physical ailments as just being me depressed. There's no winning.

I agree that just "self diagnosing" doesn't make you poser. I was also "self diagnosed" on this website for a while before I got the thorough official test that confirmed it.

If you self diagnose, and THEN a professional says "no, you don't have it", and then you keep insisting that you have it then maybe you ARE a pretender. But are there large numbers of people on tumblir who say "despite what the doctor says I know I have autism"? I don't know since I don't Tumblir. I do know a guy IRL who always insisted that he had some certain kind of learning disability. But when he was finally tested by a specialist she didn't find it. And he was complaining about that person long afterward and still insisted he had it. Used to wonder if he wasn't malingering, but Ive come around thinking that he probably has some kind of learning disability ( but its probably the least of his problems Im sorry to say).

"Your self diagnosis/assessment is clearly invalid. I know this because I'm obviously qualified to assess other people, who I've never met, through text interactions alone (often about a different topic entirely). The only acceptable diagnosis is obtained through a professional. Unless, of course, it's a negative diagnosis, in which case I can hand them out in just about any circumstance I feel like."

I think you hit on the reason I prefer to communicate in writing. The way I type my words here certainly doesn't reflect the way you would be hearing this message if we were face to face with me trying to express it verbally in that *real time*. When I have the time to look at my words, review them, and make adjustments if necessary, I often get my pointe right "the first time", versus awkwardly attempting to articulate spontaneously where I usually find myself clarifying my previous words or modifying my statements to prevent misunderstandings or incompleat meanings. On occasions where I'm required to publically speak, I will actually concoct a "spiel" and memorise it ahead of time so not to appeare as a "box or rocks" to my listeners. Given enough preparation time, I can usually come across smooth and even witty at times.

From an interview I read in "Stern"-magazine with psychiatrist Veit Roessner, head of the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry of the University Hospital in Dresden, it seems, that a diagnosis of autism is desired by parents:

This reminded me of what one social worker told me about getting an autism diagnosis. She said that there was a group of people sitting around a table arguing about what makes someone autistic, and that it's still being figured out and many people have different ideas on what it even means, which is why some psychologists won't diagnose someone as being on the spectrum when they should be because they need the help.

Out of all the people whom I'm acquainted with, there is not ONE PERSON, in my estimation, who wants to be diagnosed with autism.

Autism, to them, is RainMan at best, and institutionalized people wallowing in their own excrement at worst.

I work in an academic setting and I think a lot of people around here imagine Asperger's when they hear the word "autism". They also tend to think all autistic people are geniuses. It is somewhat desirable. But my husband used to have a blue collar job and those guys mostly thought of LFA. My husband had a sticker that said "autism isn't a tragedy- ignorance is the tragedy" on his truck, and when I went to a few xmas parties with his company, I talked to a few guys about it. Both groups are/were equally clueless, but in different ways. Maybe the difference is because people in academia are more likely to be closer to "BAP" or something. Not sure. (And maybe this isn't actually the case everywhere, and just the case with people I know).