Different types of autism?

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I've been watching YouTube videos of nonverbal autistic people. The ones that type to communicate often say how they can't control their bodies, like their flailing arms and stuff. I've never experienced not being in control of my body and when I stim, I am the one doing it because I like it. It makes me wonder... Do all nonverbal autistic people really have the same condition as verbal ones or for some is there a brain movement condition going on as well? Nonverbal autistic people also sometimes could speak and seemed normal as little kids, then regressed, lost all words and started moving oddly. This also makes me wonder if some have a specific brain condition that caused this, which I don't have.

I also wonder if there are different types of autism amongst verbal people. The people I have met are so often different to me. They tend to be very loud, in your face, odd, stand too close etc (active but odd). I am passive. I seem pretty normal, but am too quiet, stand too far away etc. Would it be better if there were more specific autism diagnoses (like active but odd and passive) as I feel sure we have different needs and I would prefer to be able to find people more like me?

Autism is just a symptom of multiple neurological conditions many genetic others maybe other causes like inflammation.

On a Venn diagram autism is the common condition ( the subjective criteria that makes up the dsm5)

But in each of those circles outside they’re other conditions like epilepsy or ID for example.

They are not co-morbids rather part of that particular condition

Many of these conditions have been identified and they are usually named after the gene effected like 15q11.2 deletion But there’s still a lot left to map

You can have a cough from a virus or lung cancer the same with autism is another symptom

Down stream the body will react in a particular way

yes, if you think of autism as being caused by uneven neurological development (developmental and neurological). then you can see how (depending on which parts of our individual neurology developed and which did not), that we will have many many different neurological struggles.

Not one of us has the "same" autism. The neurological struggles we have do define our autism. but the many ways we struggle or the amazing gifts we might have can be extremely different from person to person .

I can see the attraction of the idea of constructing sub-type categories for ASD, as it's a spectrum disorder in which it's impossible to properly fathom individual cases as if one size fits all. But I think any sub-types we invent are likely to end up in forcing people to fit them. So until something better emerges, I think we're stuck with the hard work of seeing ASD as a set of traits, each of which can be randomly different for each individual. And even that may be somewhat reductionist.

I have "mild" autism or Asperger syndrome, so naturally, no one cares or thinks my problems matter. They only care about the family members of "classic" autistic people.

Also "mild" is really not the way to describe my so called level of autism. It's more like "honey bbq" autism.

There are as many different types of autism as there are autistic people.

But as this is a bit too complex for people to grasp, and for the purposes of 'treatment', there's a tendency to divide us into groups. This used to be diagnoses like classic autism (which would likely cover those with movement disorders and limited speech) and Aspergers, but because they couldn't find a clear dividing line between these we all got subsumed under "autism spectrum disorder". Now we're just divided by levels of support needs.

I believe one day we will be subdivided according to the underlying neurological issue which has caused the autistic traits. This will result in a vast multitude of autisms. There'll be many kinds caused by particular gene mutations or congenital disease or toxin exposures. Then there'll be an even greater variety amongst the kinds caused by multiple genetic factors (polygenic autism).

There will be so much variety, in fact, that while we might all belong under the autism spectrum, we will need highly individualised supports and treatments.

I'm not talking about "cures" here, I'm talking about medications and nutritional treatments that help to reduce the adverse impact of our particular neurological issues.

I agree although in the future the word autism will largely be forgotten since it will be the gene name that takes over and becomes dominant.

This is already true already, with SYNGAP1 or Fragile X, autism is largely forgotten about, considered just a by product of the condition

One of the reasons why creating the ASD diagnosis as the only diagnosis was that it made it even harder to quickly communicate the basics of the person to others providing care.There's also massive blindspots in it being virtually impossible to qualify for a diagnosis if you're at the higher IQ end of the spectrum or closer to the schizophrenia spectrum as there was very little care made in making sure that we had some sort of diagnosis that could be used to request accommodations or even just as the basis for research.

I haven't personally seen any evidence that the folks that are now left without a diagnosis have any less of an extreme condition and I suspect that if anything it's more extreme. And the support needs aren't automatically any less than any other form of ND.

Which is really the whole point of the profiles that are starting to crop up. The traits can be rather scattershot which makes it tricky. Personally, I'm right on the border between ASD and the schizophrenia spectrum disorders, so, if I need to sum it up in a word or three, I go with either schizoid profile autism or savant profile autism as they both capture it relatively well. Although, those are definitely not at all standard as far as I can tell nobody else uses them.

I doubt very much that's going to ever happen. There's just far too much variation to blame this on one or another gene, genes are very complicated and it's likely the interplay of a bunch of different ones. All autism is really, is the more PC name for PDD.

I thought Pervasive Developmental Disorder was a subset or off-shoot of Autism?

They're the same thing?!?