The hidden horde

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Mark Blaxill (one of the kings of the mercury dads) coined the term "hidden horde" as a name for all the autistic adults that he says are not around and never been around.

There are many explanations for why autistics weren't counted as autistics and why folks don't think about 1 in 150 autistic 70 year olds.... One of the explanations is that most of the "low functioning" autistics were put in "state schools" in the US and elswhere, where they lived really awful lives and died fairly young, sometimes of hideous side effects of drugs and sometimes of just neglect and disease.

http://www.squareamerica.com/na27.htm

Anyway, click on the above URL for an idea of what their lives were like. Check out the guys who are sitting, check out the stimming.... they would have been called "idiots" or later, "Mentally ret*d," they might have been a lot like us.

Or, if sufficiently high-functioning, "quirky" or "eccentric" - see Nikola Tesla, John Adams, or my uncle Fred...

Exactly, even some of the "low functioning" would have been kept at home and been seen as something odd, something special and good, or somehow damaged maybe, but they would have done much better than those who got sent away 'for their own good."

My ex-mother in law and her brother were sent to a state hospital for a short time. I would guess that they'd be considered PDD,nos if they were kids now. They were slow learning to read and my uncle in law, especially was obviously on the spectrum, they just didn't have a way to spot it back then where he was (in north Idaho).

From 61 years of watching, most just blended in.

Only in this hyper babbling modern era is everyone expected to do things like talk, have friends, and watch the same TV as everyone else.

There were always labor jobs, warehouse, unloading bananna boats, with no human interaction.

Those with focus were sought as apprentices. Watchmakers, camera repair, and trained to do one thing well. Most workers are not worth much.

I find a lot of traits among mechanics, machinests, where it takes years to learn, and some talent to be worth teaching in the first place.

Taking one in 150, it is not hard to place them.

I have seen State Schools. It would take very low function, vegatable, to wind up there.

It is not a great job, but a lot of the staff could have well been Auties.

I have yet to get a breakdown of the spectrum. I doubt we produce that many who cannot function at all.

I hear stories of the horrible children, and then functioning adults here say, I had tantrums as a child, now called Scientific Meltdowns, but got over it and got a Degree.

No one is going to going money unless they are sold a scare story.

Children who did not talk were claimed to never develop, but a year or two later they did.

I think the modern problems are caused by treatment. Forcing unnatural growth patterns on anyone's brain is going to have later bad effects.

Raising children on drugs is the dumbest move of all. You do not outgrow drugs. Nor will they cause you to function in society.

In general us old folks see the young as a pack of lying thieving animals. We avoid them.

AS is defined as not a known crazy, but does not talk football, and reads books.

Wht the world wants to know is, "What do they do with them books anyway?"

Man, everyone has/had an old uncle who never left home, it's like the norm for existence (considering most people with autism/Asperger's don't leave home, those that do are usually in government housing or medical facilities).

I'm recently diagnosed as autistic, and I faced the normal school system; not nice at all.

You are a breath of fresh air, autism_diva. I think you might motivate us all to action!

Inventor, you sound like you've had a fascinating life.

The problem with the State schools is that they'd take a kid at age 3 years who might have ended up slow talking but employable, for instance in the scenario you gave... they could be a mechanic or load a banana boat.... but the fact that they got the kid at age three meant the kid's future was destroyed or close to it. Also the drugs they put them on starting in the 1950s made them look like "vegetables".

My mother in law and her brother were in the Idaho State School for a short time (I don't know, maybe a few months). They were far from being vegetables, my mother in law had 5 kids and took care of them well. She could read and do simple math at least. She was very odd, but not ret*d. Her brother might have been mistaken for mildly ret*d or "dull normal" but he had a job, kind of like you described. He never married. He's on the autism spectrum but never officially diagnosed... I think he's about 65 years old now.

There's a book called Christmas in Purgatory that documented what the state schools were like in the 1960's. The photos are in black and white so you might think it's from before that.
http://www.disabilitymuseum.org/lib/stills/1805.htm



These are not concentration camp victims, they are autistic or otherwise disabled adults. These people might have had great abilities but just not be able to speak and not have anyone able to care for them. Even if they had no particular valued ability, surely they didn't belong in a State School. It's tragic, and it's still happening, but not in State Schools, so much. The state has smaller warehouses for young kids and sometimes kids end up in convalescent homes or in foster care... there's no substitute for being with their parents, though, in my opinion. One of the thing that is so hard for some people like Bob Wright, in my opinion, is that people of his generation gave their disabled kids away and no one asked what happened to them, they just disappeared. So people of the Wright's training and personality never had to deal with a defective family member anywhere in the extended family or in their peer group. But the idea of just giving up a disabled kid to strangers became less and less acceptable socially here (it's still done but it's hard today to have a baby and keep it for a couple of years and then get rid of it and expect no one to notice, but this WAS done in "polite society" in the 1950s and before).





So what are the Wright's and their ilk supposed to do when their first grandson doesn't turn out to be their idea of bragging material? They can't just accept that their genetic offspring is defective, they can't just dump the kid and pretend he doesn't exist, so they have to go on the warpath against the thing that "stole" their normal grandson. They have to become major "philanthropists" to recoup what they lost in "face" by having a defective grandson... in my opinion. You see a version of this over and over with the parents who are totally freaked by the fact that they have a disabled child. But strangely you don't see this gut wrenching public pathos in most other disabilities, it's autism where it really shows up.

There's more about "Christmas in Purgatory" and the Hidden Horde on my blog here:http://autismdiva.blogspot.com/2006/10/mark-blaxill-and-hidden-horde.html

I agree. Lots of people have an old unmarried uncle. Some might be mentally ill, but a lot of them are autistic.

Hi, and

Thank you.

Yep, that too. I'm sure many homeless people are autistic, like how most of them suffer from some form of mental illness.

Case: I'd be homeless if it wasn't for my mother; I'm unable to...organize government services for myself, I'm sure there's others like me, but who don't have a loving and caring guardian.

Most of the mercury crowd are not thinking and writing about Aspergers much - their belief is that there is a recent dramatic increase in profound autism. I don't know if there is such an increase, but if so, it would indicate an environmental influence.

Here is an abstract to provoke some thought:

Here is an article that says there is an increasing prevalence of ALL types of autism over the past 30 years. They consider the possibility that better diagnosis is the reason - and it could be. But profound autism is easy to diagnose; I can't believe that only 30 years ago, kids with autism were commonly being put in the Down syndrome box or the cerebral palsy box or some other obviously wrong diagnosis. As far as AS goes, yes, changes in diagnosis rules over the past 30 years can explain that - it is a newly recognized disease.

Last edited by monty on 18 Dec 2007, 1:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Couldn't've put it better Inventor. Incidentially, in the UK we're working with a figure of 1 in 100. Of those somewhere between 75 - 95% are Aspergers/HFA

wow, that is so interesting.
Thank you so much again Monty for science quotes. They really are food for thought.
Could sunshine doses have an effect in adulthood or not? Or is it just a factor in the developing brain?
It's true children don't get out in sunlight much anymore, not nec cos of doctors advice but cos of preschool, cars on roads, high rise flats, tv, and etc. And mothers in shop and office jobs etc possibly even less so! I've often thought that we live increasingly as if in caves hibernating most of year, with exposure to sunlight drastically diminished. Stepping straight from house into car, or travelling in buses etc, rather than walking to work as before. The biggest dose of sunlight a person might get in an average day is waiting at the busstop!!
I am pretty sure i have SAD ( seasonal affective dis) and that for instance this last housemove may have been unwise, unless I can force myself to go out, because is colder here, don't have even tiny terrace of before, have stopped smoking so no reason to keep going outdoors, no good cafe terrace in village etc, and i feel the hibernatory slowness and sleepiness and retreat-urge again. Whereas the previous years since moved to france specifically in search of sun i was getting almost daily sun baths of mediterranean sun and it was mmmmm.
But when smog covered london in 19th century children got rickets from vit D deficiency. Why wouldn't that be the first and most obvious symptom? Or is it another one of those deficiency gradients, like the Vit B and beri-beri, which causes visible physical signs when very severe, even death, but at less severity "just" induces pervasive chronic health problems increasingly taken for granted in western idea of "normal" health.
Very interesting post, thanks monty.

Well, at this point, it is just a theory. Although I just saw another article that even a short term deficit in vitamin D during gestation can lead to mitochondrial issues, and another article that said that mitochondrial related deficits are common in autism. I already knew the mitos were an issue for me, as migraines and cluster headaches (which I get) are also linked to mitochondrial problems (and some research that Vit. D helps with migraines).

An article today at BBC on vitamin D and lung cancer.

The research on vitamin D and seasonal affective disorder is spotty - some studies say it helps, others say it doesn't.

One thing that is a bit short of sun-lamps ... polyethylene plastic (the inexpensive stuff in rolls) lets UV pass through, but glass generally does not. For $10 or $20, you could turn a porch into a sun room, or create a little lean-to greenhouse that would give some protection from the elements while letting the sun hit your skin. If your neighbors don't rampage and tear it down.

Thank you for the suggestion; unfortunately at mo not enough space for that but we have plans for opening up the atttic!! Might happen before i die of simple old age!!

Didn't know about mitochondrial factor. That's something linked to maternal genetic elements, i think.

There's just so much uncertainty about the question of how many were AS before recent times, or with what severity. If AS and aspergers was as severe and as frequent in the past but hidden or "put out of misery" then actually things are getting better and better.
If on the other hand environment is a major factor in worsening autistic symptoms or genuinely increasing frequency of AS then it is as if those with genetically more susceptible systems are like subjects in a huge accidental experiment in what the human species can tolerate. What would it take to make governments take the environmental menace to human health and capacity seriously?

Last edited by ouinon on 18 Dec 2007, 6:09 pm, edited 5 times in total.