Do you think autism needs to be cured

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Yes, thank you! Please, please eliminate the trial-and-error method. It took me about ten years to go from: "something is very wrong with me" to "I have type 2 bipolar that responds well to lamotrigine". While a lot of people are in their prime in their 20s, several of those years for me were a complete waste (non-functional). Interestingly a lot of the drugs that work well for me have only been around for the last twenty years or so. I sufferered for 1 year to figure out lithium was a bad match for me and the same with risperidone. (Odd that you would mention those 2 drugs). If I were born a few decades earlier, my life would be a waste and I would probably die very prematurely.
Please continue the neuropysch research.

Anyway, maybe a little off-topic but I had to respond!

how about we start up a rival company "the nt whisper" and we can cure being nt the ad should be a picture of a phone bill.

Absolutely this.

Oh, as for a "cure," there are several things about myself I wouldn't mind being "cured." For one, the *&^% stimming that gets on my nerves.

Yes, if I could, I'd most certainly get rid of my sensory issues. They are the thing about my AS that I suffer from continuously, day after day. And honestly, the only benefit I get from my sensory issues is my intense enjoyment of amusement park rides/roller coasters from my hyposensitive vestibular sense. But the amount of times I get to fulfill my vestibular sensory needs each year? I'd gladly exchange it in return for not having all of my other senses be hypersensitive...


While it is odd that I mentioned Risperdal (I just picked that randomly for some reason), which is one medication that didn't work for you, I purposely picked lithium and a different kind of mood stabilizer for my example. There is much evidence that a bipolar patient either has a wonderful response to lithium or they respond poorly to it. (And bipolar IIs tend to be in the poor responders category.) Those who respond poorly tend to do well on an anti-epileptic mood stabilizer (Lamictal is one) or an atypical anti-psychotic (like Risperdal). So, I did have reasoning behind my analogy.

As for you having several of your young "prime" years wasted to the trial-and-error method of psych meds, I also share this. I went my whole childhood with untreated, undiagnosed OCD, which made my childhood nightmarish. And when I finally started receiving treatment at 15 1/2, I didn't find the right medication until age 21. And then I continued to suffer from my idiopathic hypersomnia (which I'm convinced was caused by Zoloft) until I found a working treatment last May. Many years wasted...

Autism should be curable for those who wish it. If some people are comfortable with the condition, that's their choice, their problem. Autistic people have been disabled all their lives and don't know what it's like to be normal, so it's natural for them to fear a change. They don't know any better. I've heard stories of congenitally deaf people refusing hearing-restoration treatments because they don't want to be kicked out of the deaf community and such - it's kinda sad. A cure would open a whole new exciting world for autistic people. They would finally be able to understand these bizarre creatures known as humans, and overcome their fear of chaos.

Agreed.

One thing you have to consider in cases of adults getting cochlear implants or surgery to cure congenital blindness is that, often, the individual wishes they had never sought treatment. When very young children have hearing or sight restored, they will benefit due to the brain still having the plasticity to learn the skills needed for typical hearing and sight. However, when an adult suddenly gains a sense that they've lacked all their life, it is often very jarring and too much of a switch to the world they've known forever. For example, when a Deaf adult has hearing turned on by a cochlear implant, they cannot believe HOW loud sounds are and how jumbled spoken speech is. Their hearing often is like the hyperacusis many of us with ASDs have. In the case of ASDs, our brain was born wired differently for sensory modalities, but in the case of a Deaf individual, when their brain realized that their hearing regions weren't going to be used, their brain rewired itself for maximum efficiency in a world without hearing. Basically, what I'm saying is that, for any "cure" dealing with neurological processing, if you want to be "cured," it's better to do the "cure" very young or not at all.

No more than my being left handed needs to be cured. It needs to be understood, accepted as a variant of how people are.

Typical Typical -- we are talking about curing something we know almost nothing about.

Most professionals in the field tell us that nearly all Autistic and Asperger's people have a whole slue of symptoms like -- Depression, Social Anxiety disorders, dyslexia, disgraphia to name just a few. Some symptoms - like depression and social anxiety - can easily explained by the treatment we get from society and so may have absolutely special foundation in our mental design. Others Like dyslexia could be more common among those on the spectrum than those not, but because there in absolutely no effort in trying to find aspies that are capable of making their way without help we don't know. As far as the mental health community is concerned not tested = counted as NT. However, even if these disabilities are proven to be more common among people on the spectrum as a group. I can just about guarantee that we will find other problems and disabilities that will be more common among the NT population. So the chances are very good that it will be a wash as to which group is more afflicted by various real disabilities.

We need to do some large scale population studies to discover just what percentage of the general population is NT and what percentage is Aspie. We also need to find out if all Spectrum people get it in the same way.

My guess (please note: I say guess) is that once the studies are done we will find that what we call the spectrum disorders will not come from just one cause - that the greatest number of us will be generally incurable - as it will be from multiple gene sites through out our genetic code, and that too great a percentage of the populations will carry the genes.

Some years back we were spending great sums of money trying to cure Ulcers to no avail. The reason was that we had no Idea what ulcers were. The medical community at the time was doing what the Mental health community is doing now with autism. No real hard research in to just what is going on and all effort directed into finding drugs that masked the symptoms.

It is about time to figure out what is happening - what constitutes Autism and its cause before we go off on a wild goose chase of curing it. What may well happen it that we will find that for the great vast majority of us is--- 1. it is incurable and 2. that no cure is required in any case.

Just because I'm proud of my autism doesn't mean that I have a problem. I just don't see the point in me being like the majority of people who have a vagina - The Average Females.

Last edited by CockneyRebel on 21 May 2012, 5:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.

We already know this now. All neuropsychiatric disorders have polygenetic causes. This is why we haven't been able to find one specific gene so far. Plus, the environment DOES play a big role in neuropsych disorders' development. This is why there isn't 100% concordance rate in monozygotic twins for any neuropsych disorder.

If there would be a "cure", it should be a individual decision.
I would reject, but there are some Aspies/Autists which like to be "cured".
I would advise against a "cure", because if you would delete my autism, you would damage other parts of my brain and my thoughts.

I don't think a cure for autism will ever be found.

But... If one was available, I wouldn't mind taking it, this aspie condition has ruined my life, especially when I was younger.

Now that I'm older I'm able to control some aspects of it but otherwise it still ruins my life on a daily basis.

NTs take their lifestyles for granted...

Do I think Autism needs to be cured? No.

Do I believe that Autism can be managed better? Yes.

Should awareness be raised so people don't automatically jump to the stereotypical Autistic? Yes.

Can Autism be portrayed in a more positive manner so people don't get the wrong idea? Yes.

It all depends on how you look at it.

I apologize for my comment about NT females. The most important NT female in my life, my mum hurt me a lot when I was growing up between the ages 2 and 18 and she was still hurting me up until I turned 24, via rejection and trying to change me in ways that I didn't want to be changed. Now that I'm living on my own, I can really be who I truly am like I last was in 1996, at the age of 21. I plan to keep being my best self until I die of a ripe old age. I guess that I went a little overboard and I also apologize to the mothers on WP as well, because the majority of them are NTs.

Also, the way this question is phrased just disturbs me. Should autism be cured sounds like it might as well be "Should we exterminate all of the jews or force them to convert?". With autism being applied to more and more people, what would the ramifications of "curing autism" be? Should we cure nerd? Should cure creativity? Should we cure introversion? Should we cure intelligence? Should we cure diversity and be the same sheep? It's funny how all this research is being put into the effort of trying to cure problem when no one is trying to cure the real problem: human stupidity. I think you are just as likely to find a cure for the latter as the former.