Oh, there is nothing wrong with you.

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Given that it runs in families and siblings often end up at the same school, that might skew the stats a bit. Ie the stats in one school may be different to the general population.

The diagnosis of AS is a judgment call by a doc. There are no physical tests. It wasn't defined until 1994. I don't trust this young diagnostic process nor do I trust the stats based on it.

Agreed. I'll feel much better when they can do a brain scan to diagnose it.

I wouldn't say as much as 5% with only aspies, but maybe we could reach that with non-NTs with a loose definition of non-NTs: people with ADD/ADHD, OCD, OCPD, Schizotypal/Schizoid PD (although the Schizoid wouldn't be willing to participate), Tourette's and maybe a few more.
I definitely relate more to these than to pure NTs, as we share some characteristics (if only the not-normalness).

I've never told anyone, aside from my Hubby, that I think I have AS, and don't intend to announce it. If someone explicitly asks, then I might say something.

One reason is that there will definitely be denial from my immediate family. My Mum in particular would not accept that there was anything wrong with my eldest son for a long time and he was obviously ASD. She'd say things like 'Oh, Auntie X was a teacher and there was a boy in her class with a severe speech delay who wouldn't join in with anything and would just sit on his own, so it's quite normal' Seriously, she told me that!

Another reason is that most people know very little about AS and have all kinds of prejudices based on having watched “Rain Man” or some other program on t.v. (why do they always show the severe cases?) It's hard enough for me to get to know people as it is now that I'm a stay at home Mum, without having that label attached to me.

Because hollywood thinks everyone who doesnt work for the movie industry is a complete idiot who wouldnt understand the person was different unless they made it super obvious? Plus their research rarely extends beyond the stereotypes.

I think my immediate family and my older friends- the ones I've known since high school, are about the only ones who would readily accept that I have some form of neurological disorder, if not AS. Mental illness is like the family's dirty little secret. We know it's there but only talk about it in hushed tones when the doors are shut and the blinds are closed and there is only family there.

For what it's worth, my sister seems to associate my dad's mental illness with his eccentric brilliance. He was an entrepeneur(sp?) for a while though he couldn't maintain it. She also thinks I'm brilliant, but I told her that's quite an exaggeration. I just happen to be the only one in the family on both sides for several generations to get a college degree.

It might be nice to imagine so, but I don't think that's it. Rather, the reality is far less flattering: get yourself a video camera, write yourself a speech, and read it naturally for a while while recording. If you're like me, when you play it back you'll soon realise the reason why Hollywood prefers the extreme cases: because there's no possible way the less extreme cases will look interesting to watch If people don't like us in real life because we aren't user-friendly, they certainly aren't going to like us on-screen for the same reason. We are simply the exact opposite of everything Hollywood would normally want in a character: we might as well have anti-charisma.

Unless you want to put your audience to sleep (or outright annoy them), as a movie maker you'll want to "dress up" your aspie/autistic type by making them either an adorable, childlike, but profoundly out-of-touch basket case played against a more normal sympathetic character, or by making them an extreme nerdy weirdo geek who stands out by being annoying comic relief of some kind played against a group of more normal characters (preferably including at least one normal character who, by taking himself too seriously, obviously deserves to be punished by having some kind of Urkel inflicted upon him.)

The best you can hope for, otherwise, would be aspie-like characters appearing in works of surrealism and psychedelia (say, Lemony Snickets' "A Series of Unfortunate Events", or Monty Python's Flying Circus, or Fawlty Towers, or the film version The Who's Tommy) - where, for example, outlandish scenery, surreal situations, and shrill supporting characters might balance things out and actually make an aspie look normal by comparison.

A few posts back someone mentioned a mental institution ... Just saying!

That was me. I was saying how I have relatives who are doctors, and they probably have contacts with every mental institution in the city. So if my family finds out I have AS, all it's going to take for them to send me to a mental institution is a few phone calls and ten minutes of smooth talking . Next thing I know, I'll be surrounded by people in lab coats, wrapped up in a straitjacket, and constantly poked with syringes, all while listening to patronizing voices: "there there, you just do what we tell you, and everything will be okay". (That means "obey us or we'll make you regret your decision not to".)

If my description of a mental insistution sounded really bad, that's how my family described it.

It seems like the extreme reactions are the worst, regardless of which extreme the person cleaves to. Yes, someone who claims there's no such thing as Asperger's is annoying.

Then again, someone who glibly dismisses every thought, action, and preference of an Aspie because they consider everything about the person a result of "sickness" is at least as annoying, if not more so.

Regarding Hollywood portrayals, a few things I'd like to see in a character are:

1. Autistic actors for the autistic characters
2. A character who does pass for NT
3. Then they show what's going on behind the passing, like hiding in the bathroom at work to stim, and not understanding a lot of what's going on, and stuff like that.

Not all the characters would have to be like that, but it'd be nice to have at least one who passed.

For that matter, characters who do not pass, but are well-rounded and not just disability stereotypes.

Of course, this may be too much to ask from an industry that rarely even has fat people who aren't stereotypes, but...

Having been to a mental institution several times, I can say with confidence that it's not even a little bit like that.

Well, remove the lab coats, change the straitjackets to restraints, and change the patronizing voice to some combination of threats and manipulation, and you've got most of the ones I've been in. Not that the people who actually do pretty much obey (buying fully into psychiatry, and having a fairly easy-to-"treat" "condition" helps, too), and whose stays are relatively short, necessarily ever get to see that side of them.

Yeah, straightjackets are long gone because it was discovered that really determined and flexible patients could manage to strangle themselves with them. The big one around here doesn't even have restraints. If you get violent, then they might wrestle you to the ground and put you into "the quiet room" which is just an empty room until you calm down.

In my four visits, I've only seen one person ever get an injection, and that was a guy who was there on court-order because he was violent towards others and had been trying to murder his wife. I saw people scream and throw chairs and the most they ever got was a stay in the quiet room. I personally refused medications and treatments all the time and they just kind of shrugged and said "Ok, talk to your doctor about it tomorrow."

My sister went in after a very serious suicide attempt and they didnt need straight jackets....they just convinced an already desperate,confused person to take every medication they could.She was DX with depression but they had her on meds that were supposed to be for psychosis and seizures as well as several antidepressants and pain meds....then they started shock treatment which I wasn't notified about until they had already doped her to the gills and got her to sign the papers....argggg....the new straight jacket is chemicals....