PuzzlePieces1 wrote:
I've been struggling with autism for my entire life and I very rarely come across another person who has it. Yet the media is telling everyone that 1 out of every 60 people is autistic. If that was true, then there would be a lot more of us around. It feels like autism has become the popular excuse for people with other disorders like BPD or NPD. All these celebrities are coming out now saying they are autistic, when we all know there's no way they could be autistic and be so successful in the limelight all the time.
What do you guys think about this? I don't want to be insensitive and question other people's diagnosis but it's really bothering me that there seem to be so many fake autistic people around.
I worked in the 1980s for Robert Redford as one of his Sundance Institute / Film Festival tech staffers for some years. Because of this professional access, I worked and became friends with a LOT of celebrities including a royal heir who wanted to be a filmmaker.
While I won’t name names here, I can say that I saw these celebrities in private moments which made it abundantly clear to me that they were every bit as neurologically and psychologically diverse as autists can be. I no longer presume that celebrities are so typical that they can coast easily through their lives with hundreds of friends opening doors and making them happy. I saw abject anxiety, obsessive compulsions, shyness and a variety of other deficits. Would autism be so far behind for some of them? After all, they very often have autistic children. They aren’t immune to the condition.
It is true that celebrities can mask their behaviors and mimic other characters very, very well -- for brief times. But, during their “off” times, well, we should remember Robin Williams and others who died instead of admitting that their conditions and circumstances made them often very isolated. It is a sad truism that even celebrities have a social pecking order where one who earned $1 million last year wouldn’t dream of calling another who made $10 million.
Now, to answer the question of the apparent frequency of autism among celebrities: They often choose to disclose certain facts about themselves publicly so that they can “spin” the news favorably rather than wait for the news to be disclosed unfavorably by others. And, yes, those who are autistic probably see it, like we do, as something that is quirky and explains some of the public doubts and wonderments about them.