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Shebakoby
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06 Oct 2009, 3:04 pm

Growing up, at least in my own grade, I did not find anyone that seemed similar to me, at least in the general category of 'weird'.

Though I could not say for sure that NOBODY in my entire schooling growing up besides myself had AS, I would have to say that nobody else behaved in a manner that would make me look back and say, "Oh wow, I bet they have AS or ASD or flatout Autism"

Maybe it's just me, but the distribution of people with AS seems to be sporadic. Like, you won't naturally find a lot of them in one place unless you happen to live in a very large city. Heck I can't even find people that understand me within a 100 KM radius of my location. Oh but far away, on the internets, I can find people that understand me (well a lot more than people in the Local Area do) in Florida, the Midwest, the South, California, Eastern Canada, and Alberta.

Why are we so scattered?



protest_the_hero
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06 Oct 2009, 3:42 pm

In California it's the computer thing.



outlier
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06 Oct 2009, 3:54 pm

Fewer than 1% of the population would be diagnosable with AS, so it's not surprising.



buryuntime
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06 Oct 2009, 4:28 pm

Considering about 1 in 100 people (or something similar) are autistic if you live in a small area you might not encounter many others.



gramirez
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06 Oct 2009, 4:48 pm

buryuntime wrote:
Considering about 1 in 100 people (or something similar) are autistic if you live in a small area you might not encounter many others.

I've been wondering about that statistic lately. Seems like bull, to me.


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Shebakoby
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06 Oct 2009, 5:00 pm

buryuntime wrote:
Considering about 1 in 100 people (or something similar) are autistic if you live in a small area you might not encounter many others.

well it's a smallish town. Surrounding area included, there are like only about 20,000 people



DonkeyBuster
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06 Oct 2009, 5:23 pm

Well, 1% of 20,000 is 200, so statistically they're around... but many adults are undiagnosed and unaware, as this is a relatively new classification, which is why the percentage keeps getting adjusted.

Of course, connecting with those 200... I live in a similar size town and figure our paths just don't cross because we don't have similar special interests... and we stay home a lot. :lol: There are certainly people I can stand next to in the check out line at the supermarket and they don't feel a compulsion to talk to me... and we're both there when there's few people in the store... actively ignoring others... maybe those are the Aspies? 8O :lol:

Where do Aspies hang out in small towns... early mornings in the supermarket, libraries, er... and home. Surfing the net. :roll:



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06 Oct 2009, 5:42 pm

Yeah... I live in a small community. I figure that there about 50 people in my community that have some manner of ASD (with the 1% estimate). I imagine that most of them are children since there seem to be more kids diagnosed than adults. I sort of think that I am probably the only one in town. If there are others they probably don't have a diagnosis or are maybe institutionalized. Who knows!?

I do wish that there were some others in the region so that I could meet some folks on the spectrum. I have never met another Aspie/ASD adult (knowingly). I have met some children who were moderate to severe, but they are kids. It isn't the same...... they have not developed into who they will ultimately be yet.

This leads to another thought...... I think that it is really sort of an interesting concept that children on the spectrum may show up like a neon sign amongst their piers, but they may fade into the background as they mature into adults. Coping skills are an interesting thing, really. Sort of like a costume or mask that we learn to wear so that people don't find us totally weird! 8)


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ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo
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06 Oct 2009, 5:44 pm

I knew a couple of kids who were like me, somewhat. One was my mother's friend's daughter, whom I got along with really well...until her mother remarried and moved to another state.
There was also a boy in my class who was just as odd. Any girl seen talking to a boy, at the time, was teased about the boy being her "boyfriend" so I was shy about talking to them. Then, there were kids who broke rules and got in serious trouble for that. One kid went to a pond that was a good ways away and off limits. I wasn't that type of kid, the kind who breaks the serious rules. I was often terrified of getting in trouble. I was more like a kid who moved too much, talked too much and got in trouble because I wore everyone's nerves thin because I seemed hyperactive.



Ambivalence
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07 Oct 2009, 2:36 am

I would love to know the distribution of ASD in general. I tried to find information on distribution across the UK on the interweb, but all I could find were studies on the incidence among the general population, extrapolated from results in a given area. There did seem to be some variance between their results, but there weren't anything like enough to map it out in any kind of detail.

I'm curious because it's my impression that the incidence of ASD is higher in my part of the country - the north east - but don't have any solid evidence. I'm especially curious because I've heard - again without solid evidence - that there is a higher incidence of ASD among Scandinavian populations in general, and this area is historically associated with Scandinavia (though the genetic impact of the Danelaw is, I understand, strongly disputed.)

But yeah, I'd love to see a map of distribution, here, or for the whole world. Has anyone seen such a map? Hopefully I've just been looking in the wrong place! :)


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X_Parasite
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07 Oct 2009, 3:01 am

Well, I've never had any trouble finding "others", in fact I have 3 good friends with the diagnosis!

Now, concerning the idea of mapping, I imagine that that could be done on this site in the form of a nice world map that we would put our coordinates onto.



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07 Oct 2009, 3:25 am

If you come to physic/math university at Rome, I can bet 1/10 is on the Spectrum, probably more. It was a big relief going from High school to university, was like entering in a new world.


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Irulan
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07 Oct 2009, 3:59 am

I am glad someone has posted a topic on this because that’s the issue I pondered recently. I am thinking about people I know or used to know in the past and coming to the conclusion that to the best of my knowledge, I never consciously met another person on the spectrum. Like everybody else I happened to meet folks who exhibited eccentricities of some sort but unlike many people from WP who (in all honesty, I can say that they are doing it just by force) look for fellow spectrumites wherever they can see something out of the norm, I would never be tempted to describe them as having AS/PDD-NOS.

As far as I am able to judge, those who showed traits that are common among ASers, first and foremost had perfect social skills so I think these were just gifted. The others were not aspies but simply wimps, not too smart in addition, as I can suspect - my great aunt and her two sons one of whom died in 1997 are/were like that; about those sons I happened to hear once that they attended a special school of some sort so I don’t know what it could be about – slight mental retardation? (that’s the case of the great aunt herself, I guess) – learning disabilities? No idea. :roll:

In my grade in elementary school there was that boy in the same class who as I know now, showed the traits but I am almost sure these were just traits, well, maybe he might have PDD-NOS, that’s highly possible but not full blown AS (until he hid more extreme traits and even then his hypothetical AS would be mild). In that time I thought he was simply very shy, he came from a family which could be called pathological in some respects, I don’t know the details on how his family life looked like but his parents were a couple of drunkards (I don’t know to what extent they abused alcohol), about his mom I heard a story that, intoxicated, she once tried to jump out of the window thinking she was Batman. :lol:

Once on holidays I met a preteen boy (he told me his father his mother divorced was an alcohol abuser as well) who didn’t get social clues too well and was generally disliked because of it – he didn’t understand that people didn’t want to have him following their every step. It was striking to me. He didn’t seem to understand either that some things shouldn’t be told – he had no problems to tell us that he repeated a grade. He could have PDD-NOS, I don’t know, but maybe the real reason of his small differences was that he was immature and not too smart? He wasn’t a genius, that’s for sure. :twisted:

I also once had a student who was smart and very socially awkward but I think it was just that – he was smart and very shy. That’s already all the people under suspicion I can remember. Although on the other hand, for me, as I’m I guess, a moderate case in comparison to many people from here who seem normal, just relatively eccentric and socially awkward for me, until I was a witness of some really very out of the norm behaviors, I would not be able to recognize a spectrumite, assuming some people are just weird and not autistic in any manner.



outlier
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07 Oct 2009, 6:38 am

Nightsun wrote:
If you come to physic/math university at Rome, I can bet 1/10 is on the Spectrum, probably more. It was a big relief going from High school to university, was like entering in a new world.


In retrospect, remembering when I studied in physics and maths departments, there is only one student I would suspect to be on the spectrum. He was into Star Wars and would bring his paraphanalia to class (and explain the technical specifications of the ships), exhibited very few non-verbal cues, spoke in monotone and had no social chit chat, and I once got him to name each type of fish and sea creature kept in the tanks in the biosciences building and he knew all of them.



pandd
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07 Oct 2009, 5:37 pm

gramirez wrote:
buryuntime wrote:
Considering about 1 in 100 people (or something similar) are autistic if you live in a small area you might not encounter many others.

I've been wondering about that statistic lately. Seems like bull, to me.

Why?



Tim_Tex
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07 Oct 2009, 5:56 pm

X_Parasite wrote:
Well, I've never had any trouble finding "others", in fact I have 3 good friends with the diagnosis!

Now, concerning the idea of mapping, I imagine that that could be done on this site in the form of a nice world map that we would put our coordinates onto.


And I am a GIS expert.


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