Portrayal of adult autism

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There really isnt a problem with this video. I was just curious to what you guys thought. The reason why I did not really talk badly about the video. The only thing is the depiction of autism is limited picture. It was intended to scare people and make people more aware. Putting a high functioning individual in it doesnt do the effect. Yet they still quote the stat 1 in 110. Thats really the only thing wrong otherwise it seemed fine to me.

This is the depiction of adult autism in the media. What do you guys think is all I was asking.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to direct that at you - other people seemed to have negative responses to the video and I meant them.

Like, it is difficult for me to see how "There are a lot of autistic people entering adulthood" becomes an endorsement for aborting potentially autistic fetuses for being potentially autistic.

Last edited by Verdandi on 08 Dec 2011, 6:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

i mean people at this point are being ridiculous. there is nothing wrong with the video. if you are insulted by seeing lower functioning people then you are a d***. its when they advocate for abuse and killing like autism speaks did in "i am autism" video then it becomes an issue.

oh, i just assumed that because I was posting this video on here. It was somehow implied that there was something wrong with it. The general theme of this forum is autism media misrepresentation.

Media depiction?!?!
I hope one day my son is as high functioning as those young men.
I have spent the weekend attempting to toilet train my non verbal intellectually disabled 5 year old, and those things they can do..reading..talking..they are a distant dream. El dorado.

Do you ever wonder why that woman wanted to drive off the bridge in 'that video'? Imagine the thought of your child long after you are gone, still toddler like, living the rest of their life at the whim of unknown strangers on minimum wage.

If it's any consolation at all, IQ tests are fairly useless with autistic people, especially those who are more severely affected. Also, a lot of autistic children who have been assumed to be intellectually disabled turned out not to be once they were able to communicate. Some actually turned out to be fairly intelligent, despite previous testing showing otherwise.



I have zero empathy or sympathy for a woman who would say "I want to drive off a bridge with my autistic daughter" right in front of said autistic daughter. I can understand her fears as my mother expressed similar fears about me (without the part where she wants to kill me so that doesn't happen), and I can sympathize with that, but that particular response strikes me as entirely irrational and cruel. I would not assume that daughter did not understand what was said.

When I said media depiction, I was not saying that it was wrong? This is a documentary like video clip, so either way its the way the media is depicting adult autism. I was just asking for peoples thoughts about the film, Im not saying that autistic adults are any more higher or lower functioning then how the media depicted it. Yes media depiction generally implies that there is some falsehood in it but not always. Sometimes media depiction is correct.

Your child long gone. Where was you child in the first place, a false person you made out in your imagination? You child is the way your child is. Yes it does take the joys out of parenting that fact that you dont have a NT child. Who was your child in the 1st place? NT or autistic, many times children dont live up to parents expectations. Of course this comment is coming from someone without children, I dont desire children NT or autistic so what do I know?

But I suspect the people in the video were intensely trained.

Sorry, it reads like an outburst which it was, I was having a bad day yesterday, especially after seeing that video, quite frankly it made me sad and worried.

Back OT, the clip seems to represent our (me, my son, my families) probable future reality. I do not know if the numbers postulated are scaremongering in part though..Autism is as someone else on here has said a 'Junk Taxon' that for one, makes the numbers hard to make head or tail of.
Are the men in that clip high functioning, or low or somewhere in between? The types of services and level of services required to aid a person who is non-verbal and self harms are a lot different from those men, which is a lot different from someone with Aspergers and high IQ.

I would say you are right that those men have had intensive training. In days recently gone by that would not have happened. Institutionalised early they would have lived in communal places called Mental Hospitals and would have been described as ret*d rather than Autistic.

Looking back on my own family there are some examples of this (and clues to my sons condition I think). I have two grandparents who ended up in mental hospitals and died there. And an aunt who never learnt to talk and lived in one from when she was a teenager. I wonder what her DX would be now?

So to my mind the whole 1 in 110 rate of Autism, and Autism growth rates are perhaps dubious, and therefore some of the assumptions made in the clip are dubious.

I think putting things together maybe what we can be more certain of is that there is a growth in partly independant disabled people, with a higher expectation from them and their families as to what their life will be like, and that they represent a group of people that didn't really exist before.

I think the actual rate of autism is a bit higher, but it's about accurate diagnoses and not an actual increase. Also, a lot of those 1 in 110 or less people are likely better able to care for themselves.

I think that second paragraph I quoted is insightful and true - this is happening, and there has been a move toward more independence and less institutionalizing of disabled people (although it still happens).

Is your son getting a lot of support? One of the most frustrating things for probably everyone involved is not getting enough or any at all.

The support he gets is fairly good really, all things considered. We get a (small) child disability allowance from the govt, we get free (good quality) diapers supplied, we get some money towards respite care, and he gets a 1 on 1 aide at his child-care.

We also choose to fund an ABA programme ourselves. It chews up about half my after-tax salary.
But I'm glad we did/are doing this as he has learnt basic PECS, and to follow simple instructions and do some simple tasks; some building blocks for later things I hope.

I really dont know. I would guess they are middle of the road. I've met very few autistic people, I've met more aspergers people. Cause after all they are somewhat functionable as adults. But you never really knew how they are as kids. A autistic persons progress to functioning levels can vary over time. From what I've read, some remain low functioning there entire lives. While go from lower functioning to high functioning and resembling asperger like traits. Im sure it depend on the types of services they get and if the services work for them. Every person is different, different treatments will work with different people.

I would like to say, it also depends on there motivation to make strides in progress but then I am much more familar with aspergers then autism. And I am unsure about what level of cognitive function needed can a person have motivation. With aspergers, a persons motivation to be normalized does take into account however.

I've heard some good things about modern ABA programs, too. It sounds like you're doing everything you can to help him, and you sound like good parents.

My understanding is that early intervention makes a fairly large difference, and it sounds like you've started pretty early. Obviously I don't know enough to predict anything substantial, but I hope things turn out well for y'all.

It was interesting for me to find out where the statistic came from. It's an extremely limited demographic of the population that consists of autism spectrum disorders among children aged 8 years, by sex and race/ethnicity through the Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network, from 11 sites in the US. The Health and education records used to verify ASD's for the children come specifically from programs for the developmentally disabled.

The study itself can't exclude the potential that the increase in prevalence is not due to better awareness and increased diagnosis.

Here's a link to the actual study, where the 1 in 110 statistic came from:

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5810a1.htm

Forty one percent of the children in this 1 in 110 statistic are identified as having an IQ's less than 70, with traditional methods of IQ measurement. It is very likely that before the Autism Diagnosis came along in 1980, that many of these individuals would have been primarily classified with what is considered as the co-morbid of mental retardation, today.

And among the higher functioning, misdiagnoses of schizophrenia, and current co-morbid diagnoses of issues like bi-polar, depression, anxiety, OCD, etc., and in many cases, no diagnosis at all, except in those cases where a clinician determined based on their judgement that the individual fit the rare 1 in 10,000, condition of Kanner's autism/infantile schizophrenia.

I don't see how the CDC could have accurately captured individuals with an Aspergers diagnoses. That wasn't identified as a weakness in the methodology within that study, but the model it was based on from the Metro Atlanta area in the '98, identified that, as a weakness of that study. It's a matter of whether or not the individuals with Aspergers are part of the programs for the developmentally delayed, I guess.

I would imagine for the Govt. to try to get some idea of future prevalance increases the same methodology will be used, otherwise there won't be anything consistent to compare it to.

Glad your son is having some success with Behavioral therapy, in a discussion in another thread, I found a recent research article that stated it was the only treatment studied and shown to be effective for children with autism, and was only effective for some with autism.

I think the video is a good portrayal of young adults whom can partially cope in life, but are not able to fully incorporate themselves into the mainstream world, likely needing support into their futures.

Considering the 1 in 110 statistic measures those with individuals in the programs for the developmentally disabled, it's a fairly good representation, I think, for the average issues for the demographic of the statistic actually measured.

In the Combating autism Act back in 2006, the government identifies the weaknesses in understanding the needs of adult autism, those that have escaped identification, diagnosis, and special education. It's pretty much uncharted territory here in the US, and clear that not much action has been taken to address these concerns.

Seems like the govt. in the UK has done a much better job of identifying these individuals, attempting to understand their needs, and providing support.

Of course, they have Universal Health Care, which could make the difference, in even having an oppportunity to get diagnosed.

I see the way he is now. With only the training I can give him (and relatively little of that) as I am hesitant to seek diagnosis after my own experiences, he is quite functional.

The main signs he shows are that he engages in stim behaviors (mostly when very excited/happy, which I haven't had the heart to discourage-- I get sad thinking about teaching him that he can't do those things, which are harmless, because other people say they are bad), that he is inordinately annoying for a bright 4-year-old (just doesn't realize that he's getting on people's nerves until they get angry), and that he has difficulty controlling the display of emotions (regularly gets berated for "being manipulative" when he cries bitterly over disappointments).

I remember the same-- nearly identical-- behaviors in myself at his age, and I know the trajectory my development took with no intervention other than mockery from society and what very little lay training my father could provide.

My greatest fear regarding the child is that he'll be picked up by "the system" when he starts school next year, professionally taught that difference equals deficit and that he is therefore inherently deficient, and medicated out of his little head.

I imagine him going out in the world, asking for help for the things he does have trouble dealing with-- they may not seem significant to you, with the profound difficulties you have to deal with, but things like coping with bullies, reading subtle non-verbal cues, satisfying the social expectations of in-laws, continually satisfying the emotional expectations of a spouse, the ability to lie well, seemingly endless polite small-talk, the ability to steer a conversation, ad nauseam-- they become very significant when the repercussions of the inability to do them well are the material of your own day-to-day life.

I imagine him asking for help with these things-- or asking for help in dealing with a panic attack in a hospital emergency room, to cite an example from my own experience-- and, instead of help, getting told that he MUST, because of his diagnosis and what someone saw on Dr. Phil, be incapable of discerning right from wrong, of caring for a child, of having a meaningful two-way relationship at all, of keeping himself clean (I actually had a registered nurse ask who brought me to the hospital-- despite having a driver's license physically in my hand-- and who was responsible for cooking for me and bathing me-- things I have been doing for myself since I was 12 years old-- as she asked for a phone to contact DCFS to take my clean, healthy, uninjured, happy children away-- all because I was shaking and hyperventilating and foolish enough to disclose my, um, condition).

I imagine him being rejected by future relatives-- the way my stepmom's sister has excluded me from my stepmom's life since my father's death (and nursing home staff have failed to intervene despite Mom repeatedly asking for me)-- because they all saw on "Oprah" or where-the-fuck-ever that "people like you [sic] are sociopaths."

I'm still in therapy over that. I get ANGRY.

They're responsible for their actions, of course. But their actions are also products of the information they receive. What am I supposed to do-- stick my neck out again and again and again by becoming a one-woman public education campaign?? I tried that once, on behalf of NeoPaganism, in a small town in the Bible Belt. Five years of great effort that tested my social skills to their absolute limits. Sum of my achievement: Their attitude went from "Pagans rape children, sue elementary schools for some kid mentioning Jesus, and sacrifice cats" to "Pagans rape children, sue elementary schools, and sacrifice cats-- except for that lady out on Whitney Mountain. She seems OK so far. Weird, but OK."

People don't go deaf when you say you're a NeoPagan. The don't assume you are incompetent. What do you think happens when you tell them you're mildly autistic??? I'll give you a hint: They don't hear the "mildly" part.

I realize it's not that way for everyone. That the key word is "mildly." But for me, peoples' beliefs about ASDs have caused me as much (if not more) heartache and trouble as the disorder itself. When the media makes these documentaries, they seldom differentiate (point out the breadth of the spectrum, or often even bother to bring it up at all). And high-functioning autistics are left to deal with the consequences.

I think about my kid going through what I went through, then asking for help to clean up the mess only to have sedatives stuffed down his throat because he's in a situation that would stress ANYONE to the limits and he's not masking his frustration and upset in the context of a therapy session (where one is paying for permission to be one's unedited self), having to end up on the suicide ward of a hospital in a major metropolitan area to finally get help (and even then it was just dumb luck that there were only two open beds, and the "good" nuthouse was nearby while the "bad" one was clear across town). It was LITERALLY an act of God that finally got me decent help...

Like I said, it makes me ANGRY. Spitting, stewing, screaming, cursing ANGRY.

With a lot of people-- starting with the people who choose to broadcast the stereotypes without thought of or provision for the consequences for those who don't fit them in the first damn place.

I hope that my experiences (which, may I stress again, have been with people whose total knowledge about ASD individuals has been gained from daytime television) are the exception, rather than the rule.

BuyerBeware I made an assumption and didn't realise you already had a child!

I came back to this thread because something was going over in my mind and bothering me about the 'Media Portrayal' that we had been discussing.
Its that its always, and only the negative aspects that are portrayed.