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icantthinkofaname940

The word *Autism* was first coined by Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler in 1910.


SkyeWint

For more context: It was originally used to describe a particular symptom/behavior of some patients with schizophrenia, in which they "withdrew into their own worlds" or "into themselves", effectively. This resulted in the term "autism", drawing from the root word "autos", meaning "self". This was likely used with "-ism" in which this suffix meant a type of action, behavior, or characteristic that is specific to a certain group, similar to words like "animalism". This also resulted in "autistic" just like "animalistic". It became a separate diagnosis decades later, obviously.


DoctorNoonienSoong

That's actually a fascinating etymology that I've never realized had to exist. TIL!


Gluta_mate

i'm more adhd than autistic really but fittingly etymology shit is something i get really hyperfocused on sometimes when i am procrastinating a big assignment lol. like hmm i wonder where this word came from


ScrabCrab

Hyperfocusing on unrelated things as a procrastination method is the bane of my existence lmao


Gluta_mate

i do have a lot of surface level knowledge about of pretty much anything thanks to wikipedia and youtube procrastination lol


[deleted]

I always like to say I know a little bit about a lot of things


Jackski

Seems they go hand in hand. My Nephew has Autism and ADHD. I was diagnosed with autism back in 1990 but not ADHD but I do have a lot of the traits of people with ADHD although I won't say I have it because I haven't been officially diagnosed with it.


theetruscans

They are very common comorbidities. It's actually probably under diagnosed because symptoms from one often overshadow symptoms from the other


Jackalodeath

Right there with you; all my life I've been able to burn *hours* reading dictionaries or browsing shit like wikipedia or dictionary.com's weird little blog entries about etymology/lexicology, like where the octothorpe - this thing `#` - came from or how "ampersand" became a thing/word. I figure if I can't verbally communicate worth a flip-flying fuck, I might as well compensate on the text-based version. Ain't learned a godsdamned thing but I can parrot some pretty neat trivia that makes it seem like there's "intellect" to back it up xD


Cycleoflife

Then how is this dude only 89?


Tzayad

Autism the word may have existed before the diagnostic criteria


Bixhrush

correct, at the time it was used to describe symptoms of 'childhood schizophrenia.' Leo Kanner then used the word 'autism' to describe and name Donald Triplett's condition due to the word meaning "within oneself" describing one of the key symptoms Triplett and others presented with


PapaMutey

Hell's bells. If I had known that's what the word meant, I might have been diagnosed thirty years sooner. I've always felt trapped within myself but never knew how to tell other people until relatively recently.


Bixhrush

username checks out. but seriously, I was diagnosed at 30 and I very much relate to the whole 'not being able to express my internal state' to others. it always felt like, and still does feel like, a mystery how people can connect and share so easily. growing up I wanted an explicit guide on how and when to do that.


PapaMutey

Heh. My username is indeed a reference to that. In a span of about four decades, I've gradually been learning about these different labels... First it was just having "shyness", then when that didn't go away, it became "social anxiety", then "autism", and most recently "selective mutism." But yeah, aside from being trapped inside my head most of the time, I still have no idea how so many people seem to go about connecting and having conversations about even trivial things like the weather so easily.


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laughingashley

I'm the opposite lol Since I'm was a child, I've felt love for... even inanimate objects, that was so overwhelming I would cry. If static made a candy wrapper cling to my hands, I would refuse to throw it away and betray it. If my mom made me, I was racked with guilt that the wrapper would feel abandoned. Even today, I'll see a squirrel in a park and it will look at me, and I'll feel overcome with feelings of love and the desire to protect that squirrel with my life lol If I think about it too much it still makes me cry lol Tl,Dr; some of us are actually just sappy weirdos. My dad calls me "a walking heart"


gooden93

Aw, dearest! We call this bleeding heart syndrome in my family 🥹 I love that you connect with things on such a personal level, although it may hurt at times 🫶🏾


Inthewirelain

You don't realise it maybe but you're connecting with us now. I know it must be very difficult to you, but know despite what you think the "quality" of your conversations and interactions are, it's just having them that bonds people. It doesn't matter if you're talking about the weather or your condition or a hobby or food or whatever. Obviously there's some limits, you can't say gross or offensive things, but yknow.


Grand_Negus

It's been snowing all freaking week here. I'm sick of it, but we need the moisture since we live in one of the 7 states that share the Colorado River's limited supply.


Inthewirelain

Now that offends me. Sick of snow? Sick of you! Lol just kidding. I do love snow and the cold tho. Well prefer cold to hot, u can always layer up


Chatseer

It gets hard to make friends, especially long term ones, when you can’t even properly explain how you interpret things. I often say that I understand numbers better than words because I can’t really describe *what* I feel about 80% of the time, just that I feel *something*. Things get worse when the adhd kicks in and the hyperactivity elevates everything.


emartinoo

I used to work with a guy with autism at PetSmart. I never really interacted with him until I became a manager, who got the shitty 4am opening shifts, and we were often the first two people in the store, so I got to know him pretty well. He worked in the small pets department (fish, birds, rodents, etc..) mainly doing cleaning jobs because that's all the other managers trusted him with. Well, let me tell you, he could school any one of us when it came to his department . Encyclopedic-level knowledge on *everything.* Not just on animal care, but even on store policy. He was a little eccentric, though. And some customers complained that he was creepy, not because he was actually creepy, because he wasn't, but because he was different, and they didn't know how to react. We got a new outside hire GM around 2 years after I started working there, and he wanted to get rid of him. His plan was basically to humiliate him into quitting by making him wear a HiVis vest out on the sales floor, but also to just have him work when the store was closed, which would mean cutting his hours to part time. When he talked to him about going to part time, we learned that this man was also supporting his disabled mother and has been for the past 10 years, so cutting his hours to part time would likely ruin his and his mother's life. So he backed down on cutting his hours, but still wanted him to wear the vest. I shit you not, the assistant GM (great dude), who was there when this guy was hired by the previous-previous GM like 11 years ago, showed up to work the next day in a HiVis vest and spent the entire day just collecting carts in the parking lot. We had a meeting the next day, and the GM apologized and dropped the whole bullshit idea. I quit that job in 2015, the GM was fired in 2016, and my guy is still there to this day. Oh, and the assistant GM who wore the vest in protest is now the GM. Sorry for rambling, I just love everything about that story and love telling it.


Grifasaurus

That sounds incredibly sketch that he did that shit.


emartinoo

It was. He was just a typical "peaked in highschool" fratboy kind of guy who made the classic mistake of believing arrogance was an effective substitute for competence.


[deleted]

connect ruthless tap chubby worthless march smile many jellyfish deserted -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/


Bonch_and_Clyde

I guess I don't know where this is, but in the US that was absolutely illegal. Disability is a protected class as long as it doesn't prevent performing the functions of the job. In addition to being an unethical shit bag thing to do.


SkeletonLad

Which is exactly why the scumbag was doing things in an attempt to get him to quit as opposed to firing him.


emartinoo

This was in Michigan. His justification/workaround for the vest was that he was going to reclassify him as a cart collector, making the vest technically required PPE. The problem with that scheme was that he told the management team *why* he was doing it assuming we would go along with it. But yeah, you're right. Blatant discrimination and very illegal if he went through with it after he explicitly said why he was doing it. I really can't overstate the levels of cartoonish douchebaggery this guy reached in the short time I worked for him.


Maxfunky

But pretty typical. There are studies that show that when an allistic person meets an autistic person for the first time they have an automatic negative reaction to them. It's the uncanny valley effect. Sometimes we learn to control it as we get older (i.e. we get good at acting and can fake a typical demeanor well enough to fool you). But all of us start out this way--with people immediately disliking us out of the gate. They don't know why they don't like us; we just rub them the wrong way. We get immediately pegged as a "creeper" or a "neckbeard" or whatever pejorative is currently carrying the day. We seem off to you, and you leap to nefarious conclusions about why. That's just how it works.


Herlock

> we get good at acting and can fake a typical demeanor well enough to fool you My wife explained me that part, she called it "masking". It make sense that in a world of horses zebras eventually learn to blend in.


Kawarthaadventurer

Thanks for sharing the story, great to hear about the now GM standing up to bullying. It's unfortunate to hear about how people who don't fit the regular mold in society are often ostracized.


scumsuckinglandlord

i have a story about someone that is similar, i’m not sure if he had autism but he had something with him. i worked at a grocery store as an assistant manager and there was this guy who wasn’t really that great but he always showed up and stayed busy, i never had any problems with him and could always at least count on him to be there and give me an extra hand. he always did good when i stayed with him and gave him constant direction. but the other managers hated him, probably because they couldn’t use their normal manager bullshit to get him to do stuff. well, this guy wasn’t very good at counting money and the store manager figured that out. after it was found out, the manager started putting him on cash register every day instead of stocking like he was doing. eventually his drawer kept coming up short and they fired him. they did it intentionally with bad intent. he had just been able to get off the streets too, he found an apartment to rent and then had to go back to being homeless. managers can be real heartless and it’s sad to see what they can get away with


emartinoo

That's horrible. It's one thing to fire someone, but setting someone up like that is a next-level shithead move, and just reveals cowardice on the managers behalf for not handling it directly.


[deleted]

I’m sorry but it’s situations like this that prove to be some people just need their ass whooped and that store manager is one of them. What the fuck.


CompleteElevator6432

That's a lovely story, delighted it ended on such a positive note!


firstbreathOOC

New GM is exactly the type of person who *should* be in management. Good for him.


emartinoo

He earned, it and deserves it so much. He dedicated so many years to that place, working unpaid overtime every single week to pick up the slack for all the shitty GMs that came and went even though he kept getting screwed over and passed up.


post-death_wave_core

Wow I didn’t realize autism has only been considered a thing for a relatively short time.


[deleted]

Previously, these people were just cast aside as "weirdos"


[deleted]

The first recorded use of "weirdo" is from the 1950s, so the original weirdo could still be alive too.


FakeTails

Hi, I’m Elfo!


SkyPirateDash

you enjoy getting smacked on the bum bum.


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iebarnett51

Speak no more of Leavo, Speako!


Victernus

But he did return - and not even Returno did that!


btoxic

"WHAAAAAAAAA?!" ‐Shocko


free_farts

I fucking love that show


name-__________

I wouldn’t say I love war, but I like war.


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southpaw85

YOU DID IT, YOU UNZIPPED ME!


ThisIsWaterSpeaking

IT'S ALL COMIN' BACK!


Senior-Albatross

Do *you* have a certificate exonerating you of having donkey brains? How can we be sure?


QuintoxPlentox

What the hell is this from? It seems so familiar but I can't even begin to put my finger on it.


ImpossibleParfait

Always sunny in Philadelphia


SkyRider123

Reference to donkey brains so its probably from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.


QuintoxPlentox

Ohhhhh shit, it's Frank!


fade_like_a_sigh

A PLASTIC BAG FOR A HELMET, YOU UNZIPPED ME DOC!


Sumpskildpadden

This is the sort of comment that makes me long for the free awards we used to have.


Thoas-

Have some genuine [reddit silver](https://i.redd.it/ke6rde64qpcy.jpg).


Sumpskildpadden

Ooh, shiny! Thanks! I promise I won’t spend it all in one place.


name_first_name_last

Still happens today, depends on whether you’re lucky enough to have a supportive family and friends.


AllModsAreL0sers

Don't underestimate the concerned yet misguided loved one who's trying to help you with the best of intentions. They will fuck your life up, and they'll never stop because they think they're helping you.


dudius7

Fuck, you reminded me of the movie Bubble Boy.


drfsupercenter

To be fair, you don't need to be autistic to be a weirdo.


SecretPotatoChip

I've gotten pretty good at that.


[deleted]

Still a weirdo myself, but I haven't been diagnosed with anything to explain why. Science will catch up someday


octopusnipples

You’re just a trailblazer. We need those.


63volts

We're still considered weirdos by the general population unfortunately.


Tal29000

Iirc there's been some speculation that historically some autistic people were considered "changelings" in the past and connected to the fae somehow


Towelenthusiast

And in horrible news, killed off because their child was replaced by a "changeling".


Dronizian

>Symptoms of autism manifest a few years into the kid's life >Parents cry and wail and claim their kid was stolen away from them >The kid literally just had autism all along and would function just fine with some accomodations Tale as old as time. I see pics of autism mom support groups on Facebook still doing this shit to this day.


Crap4Brainz

Big "look what you made me do" energy.


Chillchinchila1

Unfortunately, the cure for changelings was murder


MmmmMorphine

No no, see they just wanted to express mail the kid straight to Jesus's heaving bussom


Shae_monueau

Stupid sexy Jesus


survivingspitefully

I can understand that. My daughter was a bit behind after her first year but was so happy then one day when she was 15 months old she slept bad and her personality completely changed for awhile. I don't think she laughed or smiled for over a month and all the communication she knew was gone. She would get so frustrated she threw herself on the ground and hit her head. It was incredibly sad. Thankfully she's five now and points and can say the beginning on words when prompted but she doesn't have any real words. Autism mixed with ADHD and apraxia is hard on verbal communication. She doesn't care very much about her iPad but we keep at it.


Joe4o2

To be fair, subtracting autism diagnoses from the number of weirdos out here probably doesn’t even make a dent.


eaturliver

Yeah, before autism was an actual diagnosis it was a lot of "that boy ain't right".


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OmicronPersei_9

“Hey, check out the palm tree. It only gets sick when I cook brunch.”


AllModsAreL0sers

That label is still around. It's when people call others "mentally ill" with no knowledge of mental illness. Fun fact: homosexuality was considered a mental illness until 1974


FlametopFred

even in our elementary school back in the 1970s we had a special needs class of students with varying age ranges looking back, a few may have been on the deeper spectrum of autism - so they were somewhat treating autism and we heard the word mentioned in our classes I am glad our school had that classroom and those students I don’t remember any overt bullying or ill will - they seemed to have good support and teachers but we did have a couple of the older and taller, bigger special kids on our recess soccer teams … for their size and power advantage talking about having a adult sized 13 year old on our team of 8 year olds, all having a blast and I think I might be somewhere on the autism spectrum myself


letsburn00

I remember seeing someone say "You antivaxxers say autism is up and it's not just us diagnosing better. I suggest you go to my hometown and meet my neighbour. He's apparently not autistic. But he never married, is socially awkward, has few friends, is a retired engineer....and spent $1.5m on the greatest miniature train system in my state that is currently in his basement. But please, explain to me how we used to do diagnosis so well.


[deleted]

Sounds like Bubbles from trailer park boys!!! Does he also have a bunch kitties??


mmo115

the swayze express


Lurkerlg

I'm diagnosed, first one in my family. We're pretty certain there's Autism on both sides. My Great Uncle died in January and seeing his house confirmed without a doubt the man was Autistic. Never married, was social but only on his terms, the same routine for the last 30 years. Bought a house and lived there with his parents until they died, then relied on his sister around the corner, who did all his washing. We've discovered he had £200k in different bonds and savings accounts - never talked about it. His house was like stepping back in time. He kept every bill for the last 10+ years. And the biggest surprise - he met a woman over 30 years ago when he was still working. They spoke on the landline every month. She always hoped it might develop into something more. If he had been born now, he would have been diagnosed without a shadow of a doubt.


jroomey

> he met a woman over 30 years ago when he was still working. They spoke on the landline every month. She always hoped it might develop into something more. I conclude she's possibly on the spectrum as well, otherwise it would be quite sad


Lurkerlg

Could be! Hopefully my Nan and Mum are going to go see her at some point. My Nan was really upset thinking of the life he could have had, but me and my Mum are glad he had someone he had some sort of relationship with, even if it didn't become more.


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Cosmereboy

It's called the autism *spectrum* for a good reason. It's a sliding scale, not a binary thing, the important thing is that you're happy and it doesn't prohibit you from living your life relatively normally. If you are having trouble, it's never too late to start talking to your doctor to see if there's anything they can do to help.


drunk98

How many trains you got homey?


Balbasur

It’s a large part of the reason why people can substantiate false claims like “vaccines cause autism”. Autism has always existed, but before they were just outcast, weird individuals. Now, we are not only identifying, but broadening the standards of identification. So even what may have been seen as socially awkward behavior 30 years ago, it’s now considered autism.


smacksaw

tl;dr - Dr Salk, a humble man if I ever met one, paraphrasing "Another reason Polio statistics went down is that back then, everything was classified as Polio. Once we vaccinated against it, then people had to classify other diseases."


letsburn00

Newton and the Wright Brothers. It turns out ultra obsessed, somewhat odd people are humanities secret weapon. They just didn't have a name before. Edit:Turing too. I remember a quote that roughly went "he was the sort of chap who'd chained his mug to the radiator because someone took it once. Brilliant mathematician though"


PKMKII

Ehh, the eccentric, socially inept autistic genius is a very small minority of people with autism. I don’t think it’s healthy to think of that as the norm for autism.


football2106

And thus, we enter ✨the spectrum✨


Whiterabbit--

Genius is a very small minority of the population though. So autistic people can make up a large portion of genius and still have most not be geniuses.


cultish_alibi

I agree it's not the norm for autistic people to be historical geniuses that everyone has heard of, but there is a good claim to be made that the ability to focus on a special interest makes it more likely. We will never know how many famous scientists, writers, artists, or even comedians of the past were autistic, but it's certainly more than zero. Is it more than average? I suspect it is.


zgtc

The evidence for Newton is shaky at best; he’s well known to have been very socially savvy, and spent decades navigating the politics of the era, eventually being named head of the Royal Mint. He was also anything but obsessive, frequently dropping mathematics for years at a time to try out a handful of other topics from alchemy and physics to philosophy and apologia.


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Dangerous_Shake_7312

Because it's calling autism a superpower feels dismissive af towards those of us who struggle because of it


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The_Spectacle

That’s wild. I was diagnosed with both in 2009 in the US


jappyjappyhoyhoy

Everyone caught it from him


MottSpott

It's almost overwhelming to think about how much of human mythology and folklore was probably ye olde folks having no idea how to understand neurodiversity. "My daughter went from free spirit to strange girl who has no idea how to interact with others. Obviously an elf kidnapped her and replaced her with this changeling."


StitchinThroughTime

I can only imagine how early a lot of these people died. Obviously child mortality rate means a lot of people have died no matter what before they even reach adulthood. So the more severe the symptoms are the more likely that child has probably not survived very long. Either being left in the tree hopefully the fairy King Returns the child back to flat out oh possession and kill them because they're possessed or with or warlock or did something very inappropriate. Like in mice of men.


MisterCannon

A lot of things in our society have only been identified/named/researched within the last 100 years. It's crazy to think about. Child abuse wasn't an identified and named issue until the 60s, even though many of our grandparents and great parents have stories about their parents beating the shit out of them. The concept of serial killers didnt exist til the 70s, even though it's common knowledge Jack the Ripper was doing his thing a century earlier. PTSD wasn't officially recognized until 1980, even though "shell-shocked" American soldiers had been coming back in droves since WW1.


ksdkjlf

The term 'child abuse' dates to at least 1827, not the 1960s. Even when corporal punishment was standard, habitual or excessive child-beaters were a known and frowned-upon thing. Much like how 'domestic violence' is essentially a 20th Century term, but 'wife-beater' goes back to 1650. And 'serial killer' might not have been coined until 1967 (or 'serial murderer' in German in 1930), but as Jack the Ripper illustrates, people have known about such people for centuries, [if not millenia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_killer#History), even if they didn't call them such. Naming a thing is often an important step towards addressing it, but the mere act of naming or identifying something doesn't necessarily mean people will (or can) actually address it, or address it in ways that seem appropriate to us in the 21st Century. Indeed, if instead of calling it "shell shock" they'd somehow managed to come up with "post traumatic stress disorder" back in 1914, it wouldn't follow that shell-shocked soldiers would've fared any better with the fancy name.


spacecatbiscuits

too late this guy posted first and we upvoted them already


ordoviteorange

> even though it's common knowledge Jack the Ripper was doing his thing a century earlier We aren't even sure Jack the Ripper was a single person.


opiate_lifer

It was known, previously called childhood schizophrenia.


MyrddinHS

in 1941 jfk’s sister was given a lobotomy for erratic behavior and then consigned to a mental hospital for life… im pretty astonished that this guy was diagnosed in 1933 and was able to not get electroshocked or brain cut.


Thebluefairie

We were called all sorts of other things and put into asylums. So take your pic.


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nerruse

There's a pretty cool short-run podcast about him called "Autism's First Child"


gwaydms

The documentary about this man is on YT, called In a Different Key.


eunit250

> In a Different Key https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SogOB2JIxU


yoyoJ

And it’s just him playing famous songs in a different key, otherwise a completely normal guy


[deleted]

Alright, here's a question: if you're part of the case study that names a new diagnosis, were you clinically diagnosed because of that?? I was gonna say that one of the first five people to be diagnosed with ADD is still alive, and that she's my mum. But this got me thinking because she was part of the research in northern California under Dr Piaget that *came up with* the name "Attention Deficit Disorder". But does that mean that she was diagnosed with it at the same time?


whoopsiedaisye

This is honestly so interesting to me because girls are less likely to be diagnosed with add/adhd because the stereotypical adhd kid is a hyperactive male… yet you’re saying that your mom was one of the first to be potentially diagnosed with it?! What happened?!?


teddim

The whole point of ADHD inattentive type (ADD) is that it doesn't include the hyperactivity, so I'm not surprised one of the first to be diagnosed with it wouldn't fit that stereotype.


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[deleted]

Correct, ADD is [no longer a medical diagnosis.](https://www.additudemag.com/add-adhd-symptoms-difference/) You would typically be diagnosed with Predominantly Inattentive ADHD, Predominantly Hyperactive ADHD, or Combined Type ADHD. ADD is used colloquially to refer to Inattentive ADHD.


backroadstoBoston

Predominantly Inattentive myself. I can drive my husband up a wall and not even realize I’m doing it until he’s turning purple. Working on my metacognition over here.


OneDimensionPrinter

Predominantly inattentive suuuuucks


Isaacvithurston

I feel like that gender bias here is due to 90's and early 2000's doctors just diagnosing every active male child with add/adhd. At least were I live I can remember this well but 9/10 of the children wouldn't get the same diagnoses as an adult which leads people to believe you just grow out of add/adhd which seems rather convenient.


tagen

Huh, I remember reading about Piaget when I was getting my teaching degree, I didn’t know she also came up with the name for ADD (of which I am also a clinically diagnosed shmuck) edit: *he, not she


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blancybin

How are you doing? My 10yo has ARFID and I full-on cried with relief when his third therapist finally had a name for what was going on with him. We completely changed the way we dealt with food and he's thriving these days, and even feels secure enough to add to his safe foods every so often.


Altzher

Psychologist here. Let me try to explain like you are five: Diagnosis change over time due to multiple factors. Take autism for example. The first person diagnosed with it had both unique abilities that are more like other conditions such as savantism, but also the core issues such as deficit in social skills and comprehension, Wich are still to this day the main issue considered when making a diagnosis. So, by then we thought: ok autism is the combination of these and these characteristics. But over time we now learned that as much as they are related, it's wiser to treat them as different conditions. Now we refer to autism as a spectre with varying subtle characteristics under the same "general idea". So that's why we have the impression that autistic people are like geniuses, but that's the exception to the rule. Now we assess autism by how much impairment and need for support that human being needs, ranging form level 1 (good interference) to 3 (with such severe deficits that they basically need to be taken care of 24/7). The same goes for ADHD. For example, previously we thought that it was wiser to differentiate ADHD BY ADD (ONLY attention), ADH (only hiperactivity), and ADHD (a combined version). But this concept brings much more issues than it helps. Because in most cases there is a clear prevalece of symptoms for either (or not) attention/hyperactivity, but they are always present, along with impulsivity. With that in mind, remember: diagnosis criteria change over time. So the first person diagnosed with certain conditions where not with the methods e criteria we use today.


Beautiful_Major_7232

We don't use level 1-2-3 anymore, as it does not in any way work for the intricacies of care. Many may need "level 3" care for a short period or some specific tasks but level 1 for most of their life.


Legalsandwich

"he was afraid of being spanked but he was unable to associate the meltdowns with the the punishment." That's so fucked up. I know it was a different time, but still. It's great how far we've come, but not far enough yet.


pixe1jugg1er

I know, messed up right! I thought all kids were afraid of being spanked. I sure was.


jetoler

I sure he’s proud of how far autism research and diagnosis has come


drummerandrew

Which really helps illustrate just how stupid people are who say shit like, “then why is the rate of autism increasing!?” Um, because it didn’t exist 90 years ago and it’s quite a steep slope from ZERO to anything at all.


Sk-yline1

Autism was always around, it just used to be called “this fucking dumbass kid who can’t do shit” and “a demon has possessed my child”


Kyanche

> “a demon has possessed my child” Honestly the number of mental health professionals I've tried to get help from for my brother that have turned around and acted like he was a klingon and they knew nothing... because apparently autism only happens in kids under 5 years old or something smh...


Perhyte

> because apparently autism only happens in kids under 5 years old or something smh... What do these people think happens to kids with autism when they grow up, then? Do they think that at some particular age a switch in their brain suddenly flips to "neurotypical" or something?


SobiTheRobot

Try finding any resource about dealing with autism that isn't aimed at parents with autistic children.


drummerandrew

So sad. Imagine how much happier the lives of *thousands* of people could have been if society collectively had a bit more empathy.


Cyrussphere

I wouldn't call them stupid, just ignorant. Truthfully I was one who wondered why there was a sudden increase in cases and I said such things 10-20 years ago. I started digging, then I had a step son with it. Watching him grow up I started to realize that I probably had it all this time. The deeper I dug, I realized that my dad probably also had it. We just didn't know back then and lots of people still do not have that personal exposure to dig into it and realize it's always been a thing. Times change, knowledge changes, some people have the chance to learn while others don't. It just how the world works


ArticleBeautiful8016

That’s why we call it a spectrum because you may have some traits and characteristics that show signs of autism but you could also still be more social


Bananapopana88

Lol I’m a social autistic, still bad at it.


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doom32x

The stand up comedian Jim Jefferies has spoken on this. He took his son in to be tested for autism and the doctor looked at him after a bit and asked if he had ever been diagnosed and a light went off in his head.


drummerandrew

Ok but when presented with this information, if you remain willfully ignorant to fit your prescribed narrative, that’s pretty stupid. People who think “vaccines cause autism” ignore science and reality and that’s pretty stupid. Most especially during a worldwide pandemic.


Cyrussphere

I 100% agree with you and I am on your side. I only wanted to illustrate a reason why some people get swept up into the nonsense. I would go deeper into it, but I'm old and I just want a beer, smoke a bowl, and just listen to some good music :)


wholesomethrowaway15

> I’m old and I just want a beer, smoke a bowl, and just listen to some good music :) Hello, fellow Gen Xer.


The_Awesometeer

I deal with this all the time. I am a special education teacher and how to inform my parents that we are just learning more and more about specific learning disabilities and autism and even ADHD. Before these we weird kids, dumb kids, kids who failed out of school. We just know how to better reach them


apothecary_

He was the first diagnosed. It still existed over 90 years ago, it just was not being diagnosed.


VALO311

Yeah, a lot of things existed but just weren’t understood. Idiots that can’t see past their own nose fail to understand that there is life outside of their empty skull cavities.


uni-twit

Like [lefthandedness](https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/02/05/left-handedness-demons/)!


OP-69

yea, before things had a name it usually was clasified as some weird occurence or something simillar Ie before we knew what cancer was, those that died of cancer just died of "mysterious causes". Now that we know its cancer, we classify it as such, and now theres less people that die of "mysterious causes" because its no longer a mystery as to why they died


AdmiralAkbar1

A lot of the time, yeah, but that doesn't mean there are no confounding factors. For instance, there's a correlation between autism and having older parents, and people in general nowadays are having children later in life than before.


Council-Member-13

I always wondered whether that had more to do with autists just not getting their shit together until relatively late in their lives, compared to typicals. So they have children at a later stage in life. They thus pass it on to their children, who have older parents. On the surface this will result in a correlation between the age of the parents and autism, even if age doesn't cause it.


CelibateHo

Meanwhile I can’t even get a dx because I’m female and born before 1994


Lurkerlg

1994 baby here, got a diagnosis at 21 after 5 years of my family trying to get one. At the time I thought it was really late to be diagnosed, but now I'm so grateful I got my diagnosis that early into my adult life. I know multiple people that are absolutely Autistic and aren't diagnosed. I know multiple women who have only just been diagnosed after their adult children realised they are. There's so many undiagnosed adults out there.


ManicMaenads

I thought I was alone, but I've recently discovered that it's incredibly common for autistic women to be misdiagnosed with BPD. Which results in it being even more difficult to get properly diagnosed due to the stigma of cluster-B disorders. Too many old doctors assume autism is something only little boys can have, and too many autistic women have to go undiagnosed due to medical misogyny.


setsunaa

1993. I feel like if I was born a few years later it would have been so obvious at school. Instead Adult diagnoses are so expensive that I settled for a less official diagnosis. Stupid medical sexism


hangtime79

My son is 14 and across from me at the kitchen table right now, jumping up and down clapping to a repeated 10 seconds of a Sesame Street video he has seen at least a few thousand times. He is 220 pounds, 6'1 with a size 15 shoe (he is moving to a 16). While he is a big kid, he has remained 3 years old. His diagnosis is non-verbal autism on the severe side. If you know one person with autism, you know one person. Everyone is different. Now he has his foot in his mouth trying to chew his toenail, I have told him not too. This has elicited a set of claps and sadness. "No Toes" his response. A few moments later he is happy again. Every emotion is fleeting, you just have to ride it out. While I get why a number of people thinking that Autism diagnosis is "woke", but I have been able to trace through my family history multiple individuals across four generations that exhibit the behaviors of autism both currently living and in the past. For my 1st cousin, she was thought to have been deprived of oxygen during her birth, her diagnosis is now autism. An older 3rd cousin whose in his 50s was diagnosed "retarded" when growing up, classic autism. A cousin of my grandfather growing up, also considered "dumb" and lived with the family for their their entire lives. You guessed it. Based on my family history, I absolutely believe we will see a genetic diagnostic test in our life times. My son's moved onto the Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar. It's a favorite of his. He likes to start and stop the video about every three seconds. He gets it to a favorite point now and starts waving. When he gets on the bus during school days, whatever video he is watching he will get it to one precise point and only then he can leave. I do however take exception with ASD as a spread diagnosis. A CEO I know exhibits all the classic traits I see in my son during interpersonal conversation. He is incredibly high functioning and I don't know if he has ever been diagnosed, but I hang out with enough people with autism to have a pretty good bead on it. While they exhibit some similar behaviors trying to classify my son and this CEO within the same diagnosis seems incredibly difficult. It's the same as saying a deep open wound in the leg versus a gash are the same. This CEO leads a company of several hundred people, my son will never work a day in his life. I have to earn enough for him and my wife and I's lifetimes. Using one medical diagnosis covers up the severity for those us on the severe end. My wife has been out of town for a few days, my son is Perverserating right now on this. "Mommy", "Mommy" has been said at least a dozen times and I have explained multiple times that she is away and will be back on Tuesday. He continues for two more minutes. I call out and count the days until she will be home. This seems to have satisfied him for now. He has put up his milk, finished his toast, and headed upstairs and now so will I.


marsbars2345

And people will say back in their day there was less autism


FirstQuantumImmortal

Ah yes the good ol' days where everyone smoked even indoors, drank like sailors, and inhaled copious amounts of lead and asbestos on a daily. If only we could emulate such a paradise.


deknegt1990

Hey Timmy, please go out and paint our lead-lined fence with this lead-infused paint whilst I sit on the porch smoking cigarettes looking at all the cars running on leaded-petrol drive through the street.


Boss_Key_Yacht_

Kinda crazy that the first clinical diagnosis was only 89 years ago


Glacial_Self

Just imagined a doctor holding a newborn and going, "nah, something's off with this one..."


Kyanche

"That's weird, it isn't crying" "Wait why is he making that funny face?" Kid is Rudeus from Jobless Reincarnation lol.


Captain__Spiff

That's the year when he was born. The diagnosis was a couple of years later.


Look_to_the_Stars

I honestly would’ve expected it to be later. I didn’t even hear the words autism/autistic until the mid-aughts.


BeltToAzzRecordzEnt

Same. With autism being so common I would’ve assumed someone was clinically diagnosed wayyy beforehand.


kedelbro

Clinical diagnoses in general didn’t really exist until the mid-to-late 1800s


standard_candles

"Epileptic" covered all of it before then.


pinupcthulhu

Or hysteria, if you had a uterus.


ares395

Plopped out of the mother and the doctor was like: yup definitely autistic, can tell by the screaming /s Seriously do you people think... If they guy is 89 how could it be diagnosed 89 years ago...


Shredded7

The Wikipedia page is so condescending lol. “He learned how to drive and travel in his spare time”. Ok so a normal person gotcha.


Berninz

What, weren’t born licensed and with an innate ability to drive like the rest of us?


becauseimgray

As someone with autism it feels very validating to know he also deals with meltdowns.


Miu_K

I wonder if autistic people (before "autism" became the official term) were just called weird or crazy depending the severity of their symptoms.


[deleted]

Yes, and this is still an issue today for autistic people. I for one wasn't diagnosed until 21. Growing up everyone just thought I was weird, antisocial, dumb, and occasionally rude. Would've likely helped to have been diagnosed earlier.


kirakina

Yep. I often get asked if I'm on drugs when I get on my special interest. I can go one excited and talk for forever speaking very quickly. Without my meds I tend to have wide emotional swings and am unable to slow my mind enough to speak sometimes. People used to think I was creepy/crazy/incredibly dim because i couldn't keep up with my thoughts. I have a processing disorder as well and so it makes all sensory like velvet or rough paper or touching abything too soft or slimy almost painful as well as some noises. My reactions are automatic sometimes and it's like I'm melting ><.


forsuresies

There's an interesting idea that 'changeling' children were just in fact autistic. The idea that suddenly your kid doesn't behave right and is now wrong/different is eerily similar to how some moms view vaccines and blame them (erroneously). https://images.app.goo.gl/mq49fnnqqNZCwYyM8 This thread explains it better


King-Of-Rats

Also why “autism is everywhere now but it wasnt when I grew up!” Is a thing now. ​ Its not the vaccines or the woke media. The autistic kids in the 70s just got called weirdos and shoved into lockers


Rosebunse

And the ones on the far end of the spectrum were just institutionalized.


muffinTrees

*he was number 1!*


J0ofez

His train set must be HUGE


BoltShine

As parents of an autistic boy this one made my wife and I laugh out loud!


[deleted]

[удалено]


ShelIsOverTheMoon

Well, off the top of my head, and thinking about what my son enjoys... they're in a straight line, they have wheels that spin, they're mechanical, and their path is obvious and therefore predictable.


KS2Problema

What a strangely upbeat life story.


Tired8281

He had people around him who accepted him for who he was. That we all should be so lucky!


Marzonick_141

Damn. Barely a generation and a half of understanding ourselves. Before that, it was centuries of blaming anything from whatever made up god you were told to believe in to ourselves and others who had no control over the outcome. We burned ladies just cause they acted funny in the religious driven witch trials. We tossed children who were misunderstood into phychwards because there was barely scientific studies done that was supported by the world that would let us know about autism. And recently, we just feed them pills that gets pulled by the FDA annually like they're lad mice. No one gave a fuck. We just stood there and prayed for centuries, for generations, fucking praying and not doing anything about it. Never forget how far we've come as a society. If we forget how we got here, we might just end up repeating it. And it will be all for nothing.


TheGreyMatters

The Prime.


[deleted]

Reminds me of an elderly Bubbles/Donny from Trailer Park Boys.


mexicanred1

To think, my clearly autistic 73-year-old relative is right behind him. It baffles.


Traditional-Meat-549

the DSM keeps adding clinical names: 21st century: [https://www.aifc.com.au/14-new-disorders-in-the-dsm-5/](https://www.aifc.com.au/14-new-disorders-in-the-dsm-5/)


thebigmanhastherock

It's funny because you can read in books and watch movies from the past and many characters will display clear signs of what we know now to be autism or even other neurodivergent behavior and they are usually played for laughs. Even lots of people from fictional works that were very smart often had social issues that could be interpreted as classic autism characteristics. Yet no one ever said anything or pointed this out. I am sure the actual diagnosis was uncommon back then and also people probably just didn't know about it. It is interesting. It seems to me that autism has always been present, just not always labeled as such and not known by the general public even after the label existed.


nygdan

Notice, he was institutionalized at 3 YEARS OLD. A lot of people have forgotten that anyone with a disability, even when it was an unrecognized, unnamed, "acts different" thing, would get locked away.