Do functioning labels matter?

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Im not a big fan of functioning labels. I am moderate to high functioning apparently. I dont exactly know what that means. I really dont think it matters. I have my good and bad days.

Yeah I hear ya.....labels can be limiting

No, there are many grey areas, and functioning labels can be used to either deny people's capabilities or their struggles. Every autistic person is different and has their own strengths and challenges. Just be who you are and don't worry about labels.

Bureaucracies need them for resource allocation. They tally numbers to justify budget and hiring needs.

Sometimes, one has to be sensitive to somebody whose anxiety and other facets causes them to, say not be able to attain gainful employment.

One shouldn’t push such a person as much as somebody who is able to work, and make their own money. One should know one’s actual limitations and strengths before pushing them.

Labels are for jars, not people. I know that sounds corny, but it's true.

I agree. Functioning labels show what the doctor who diagnosed you thought you were like, not what you might actually be like. No autistic person is more or less autistic than any other autistic person. Their symtoms just manifest differently.

That's BS. You cant go so far as to state that some individuals aren't more severely autistic than are others. If that were so then you couldn't claim that there was difference between all autistics and neurotypicals.

But having said that it is also true individuals in the autism spectrum cant be neatly pigeonholed into grades like "low, middle, and high functioning". An individual who is indistinquishable from a NT in most ways might have a deficit in one area that cripples that person's functioning more that someone who is more "globally" impaired but who is impaired to a lesser degree in each issue. The former might be labeled "HFA" and the later middle or low functioning, yet it might add up to about the same amount of impairment.

I see your point. However, I don't think that the difference between two autistic people, one "high functioning" and one "low functioning" is in how autistic they are. They are both autistic. Whether or not one is autistic or neurotypical is binary, yes or no, with no grey area and no level of autistic. This is not to say that all autistic people function at the same "level," because, like you said, this is obviously untrue. However, the difference between a "mildly" and "severely" autistic person is in how well they can mask their autistic symptoms/traits, not in how autistic they are. A "mildly" and a "severely" autistic person are both autistic, and one is not more autistic than the other, BUT one has the skills to SEEM less autistic, and the other doesn't. These skills can deteriorate during meltdowns, which can cause otherwise "mild" autistic people to become nonverbal or engage in behaviors that are more commonly seen among "severe" autistic people, which just goes to show that the "mildly" autistic person and the "severely" autistic person are the same all except for the level to which they are able to mask their autistic traits. This is why previously "severe" autistic people are able to seem "mild" after years of therapy, since they have learned the skills with which to mask their autistic traits. However, they certainly did not become less autistic.

I have come to learn the limits of labels in my old age, but I still found my label to be useful. It gave me something to google so I could research myself and come up with life plans.

Where did you get this nonsense from?

Have never read, heard, nor observed, anything like it. NTs can have aspie traits, but not enough to be diagnosed with aspergers or autism. Its not binary on and off at all when you cross the boundry line from NT to autistic. And likewise as you go down the autism spectrum away from high functioning to low you get more, and more severe autistic traits. Just like folks vary in height. And after a certain cutoff you are considered a "dwarf", and then some dwarves are shorter than others. But the tallest dwarfs are truly taller than the shorter ones. Its not that they "mask" their shortness better than the shorter ones (with elevator shoes).

Using the dwarf analogy, dwarfism itself is actually a genetic condition caused by certain genes. One can be extremely short but still not be a dwarf because they do not have the genetic condition of dwarfism. It IS black and white whether or not one has the gene that causes dwarfism, but of course it isn't black and white how tall one is. Just because one dwarf is slightly taller than another doesn't mean they both aren't the same level of being a dwarf because they both have the exact same genetic condition. The same is true for autism.

Dwarfism doesn't work that way. Its not just one gene causes you to be a dwarf.
They don't know what causes autism, but they know enough to know that autism doesn't work that way either. They are only now in the last few years identifying genes that may be related to autism, and it is not just one gene. Autism seems to be the result of many genetic and epigenetic and environmental factors.

You didn't answer my question: where did you get this notion of yours from.... that "all autistics are equally autistic"?

One reason I ask is this: everyone in the human race (laypeople and experts alike)says one thing (what I am saying, which is that there are degrees of autism severity), and you alone are saying something else (that all autistics are equally autistic). So you are this bizarre outlier who are proposing a heretical theory. But you talk about it like it isn't heresy, but that "shrug,everyone knows this". Its as if you're saying "don't forget that the moon is made of green cheese", or "watch out for the stampeding unicorns, and for the annoying traffic jams of bigfoot creatures".

If that really is your belief then you should be aware that its your own unusual theory, and if you're gonna talk about it then you should acknowledge that it is an usual theory and that its at odds with everyone else's thinking.

You dont say "dont forget to watch out for stampeding unicorns", you say "despite what the scientists say I believe that there are such creatures as unicorns. And not only do they exist, I have observed unicorns in such big herds that they overgraze vegetation on hillsides and cause soil erosion, and that they even have dangerous stampedes!".

Another reason I ask is personal observation. There are members of my family who have aspie traits. But I am probably the only one with the right combination to be actually diagnosed as aspie. So the spectrum of degree of autism goes over the border well into NT country. Its not black and white at the border between NTs and high functioning autistics.

Likewise I hear about severely autistic people (have even meet a few) and about their behavior and disabilities. I just cant believe that the only difference between them (extreme LFAs) and me (officially labeled as aspergian, and therefore at the high end of HFA)is that I just mask it better. They must be more severely autistic.

And even if there were something to what you're saying (and there could be something to it): that the "spectrum" is due to degrees of masking a condition and not the severity of the condition, then you have to explain why some folks are dramatically better at masking than are others. Its sounds like you're just turning it on its head. Like saying "Warren Buffet isn't more rich than I am, he is just less poverty stricken than I am".

I am pleased to see functioning labels gone from the DSM and likely to be gone from the next ICD as well.

They appear to have been introduced to indicate whether there was an intellectual disability as well as autism or not.

They do not appear to have been intended to indicate how well or otherwise a person could function in the world, rather they seemed intended to indicate how defective or broken the person was.

Hence the criterion was the score on the IQ test (70) rather than any assessment of ability to function in the world as a whole.

A crude and unkind translation of these obsolete terms might be
Low functioning - social and thinking circuits broken
High functioning - only social circuits broken.
I think it possible the functioning labels can be quite pathologising.

They have not eliminated 'functioning levels" from DSM 5 at all.

They just changed the terms a little bit so now its "level 1", level 2, and level3 (level 1 meaning "needing the least support", to three meaning the most support).

Still, quite a bit of confusion about the topic of functioning labels so let's try to clear this up, try is the operative word.

As understood professionally functioning labels does necessarily not mean the literal ability to function in society. "Low functioning autism" means autism with intellectual disability or IQ below 70 or 80, "High Functioning Autism" means everybody else. Sure there is overlap but it is not the same.

The words "high functioning" and "low functioning" were never in the DSM or ICD or any diagnostic manual I know of.

Antidotally since Aspergers was removed from the DSM, diagnosis of "high functioning autism" are being given out in lieu of Aspergers despite it not being in any manual.

As naturalplastic said while the literal words "high functioning" and "low functioning" do not appear in the DSM the levels of severity based on needs of support are describing the literal ability to function in society. "With or without accompanying intellectual impairment" is the recommended wording for the way functioning labels have traditionally used.