• Lemminary@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    If autism isn’t a single condition, why do we lump everyone who’s autistic into the same bucket?

    What categories could they use from the start to differentiate subconditions to avoid this? Experts couldn’t say if it was one disease or many, but they could tell they’re all closely related.

    Investigating health is hard and only hindsight is 20/20.

    • RedFrank24@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Asperger’s used to be a categorisation, but they got rid of it because 1. The guy who came up with it was a Nazi and used it as a means of segregating those he didn’t intend to murder from those he did, and 2. the border between Autistic and Aspergers was pretty vague and whether you got the diagnosis was dependent on the culture of the clinic doing the diagnosing and not any objective criteria.

      I dunno, it feels (obviously irrationally) a little bit insulting that there isn’t a categorisation, because by lumping everyone who previously had Asperger’s in with Autism, it doesn’t matter how well you mask, as soon as you mention you’re autistic, everyone thinks you’re one wrong word away from having a meltdown. Nobody sees levels, they see Autism, and what was formerly known as Asperger’s, where the latter are a bit weird, and the former are in need of serious care.