Lemmingworks

How do autistic children survive as adults?

Families complain there is not enough support and a postcode lottery syndrome for sufferers of autistic-spectrum disorder….

Peter Griffin is 29, he has an IQ of 159, a degree in astrophysics, and a gallows humour about his Asperger’s syndrome, an autistic-spectrum disorder that makes social interaction so difficult that his longest — indeed his only — stretch of paid work has been a Saturday job in Tesco, which he has had since he was 16. He is so wired after his shift that he is awake until 4am and it takes him the rest of the week to recover: “At the end of a day trying to be ‘normal’, acting the part, wearing the mask and reining myself in, I’m like a pressure cooker.”

I wonder what would have happened if I’d not HAD to leave the house and go out on my own. Perhaps for most folks it just leads to more anxiety, and certainly didn’t generate any confidence, but it did generate capacity, and less of a worrying about the future. It would be great to start running workshops for ASD adults with the hope of designing spaces that would help them engage in a comfortable manner. Or better yet, force everyone else to do the reverse? Hee hee

lj aspergers, autism

Oh, I wish I could have gone to the new College for autistics at Cal. State University. Of course this flies in the face of inclusive education, but there is a time and place for everything. If this is a research experiment that will help understand how differently Auties and Aspies need to be educated, it will bode well for understanding how higher education needs to grow if it is to have any hope of being inclusive AND getting the best for our society from and for all our members. What a neat idea! Eh?

Much of the growing literature on autistics focuses on their limitations and disabilities: the socially awkward behaviors, the large gaps in cognition and conceptualization, the self-stimulating behavior like spinning or rocking and self-talking.

But it is also true that many students with autism possess academic skills more advanced than many students in computation, observation and documentation. They often bring a different way of looking at the world and a singular creativity. Can these skills and insights be harnessed in ways that allow the students with autism to succeed in college and in the larger world and work world? This question is central to the experiment about to begin in Hayward.

Aspergers Syndrome aspergers, autism

H1N1 and other flu viruses linked to autism, schizophrenia | The Autism News

Dr. Hossein Fatemi has been testing the H1N1 virus and its impact on fetal development for over 10 years. His findings provide an important link between viral infections in pregnant women and profound mental disease in their offspring.

The H1N1 swine flu that has been making headlines is but one species in an infamous H1N1 lineage that has circulated among human populations since 1917 – and the H1N1 lineage is one branch of numerous flu virus species. While flu viruses present themselves through the physical respiratory symptoms we have long associated with them, it is now apparent that their impact is more dangerous and profound than we had understood prior.

I spoke with Dr. Hossein Fatemi, Professor of Psychiatry, Pharmacology and Neuroscience at the University of Minnesota Medical School. Dr. Fatemi has been studying the link between H1N1 specifically and autism and schizophrenia since 1998. His work has centered on mice, but the lessons learned certainly translate to human populations.

In the 1990s, there was evidence that pregnant mothers who had been infected by the flu had given birth to children with schizophrenia.

“We asked a simple question,” Dr. Fatemi said. “If we infect pregnant mice at various gestations with H1N1, does it cause abnormalities in the offspring’s brain development. The experiment looked at the impact of H1N1 infection on brain genes in the hippocampus and in the cerebellum.”

The findings were staggering and pointed to a direct connection between flu infection and the onset of autism, schizophrenia, and other gray and white matter afflictions.

“A large number of brain genes were affected significantly in both the hippocampus and cerebellum,” said Dr. Fatemi.

Autism has been on the rise – and this has been an unexplained phenomenon. A number of studies have looked at mercury levels in vaccination dosages, but Dr. Fatemi’s look at flu infection may offer a broader understanding of how psychological disorders may be emerging from viral sources.

“Some cases of autism may be a consequence of these natural infections,” Dr. Fatemi said.

Now that’s interesting. If this is the case, perhaps we can engineer specific flu viruses as genetic engineering tools Just joking but it is an interesting point. What are viruses but information vectors.

Aspergers Syndrome aspergers, autism

Teenager convinces airline bosses that he is an aviation tycoon | The Autism News

The police will not be taking action against the teenager, who is reported to suffer from a form of autism and to be able to recall the exact detail of every airline’s flight schedule.

Gotta love that. Never would have occurred to me to try to pull that off in a million years.

Aspergers Syndrome aspergers, autism

Challenging popular myths about autism | The Autism News
Myth #1: All autistic people are nonverbal and low functioning.
Myth #2: Autism is a mental illness.
Myth #3: Autistic people lack empathy.
Myth #4: Autistic people are antisocial.
Myth #5: Autistic people don’t make eye contact because they don’t care about what people have to say.
Myth #6: Autistic people can’t have families of their own.
Myth #7: Autistic people are puzzles with pieces missing.
Myth #8: Autistic people have low intelligence.
Myth #9: Autistic people do not enjoy life.
Myth #10: Autism is a disease in need of a cure.

Aspergers Syndrome aspergers, autism

Aspergers Syndrome aspergers, autism

I’m glad someone else said this. I’m tired of being told that I lack empathy…

HealthZone.ca – Mind & Mood – Asperger’s theory does about-face , Rather than ignoring others, researchers think spectrum sufferers care too much

A groundbreaking study suggests people with autism-spectrum disorders such as Asperger’s do not lack empathy – rather, they feel others’ emotions too intensely to cope.

People with Asperger’s syndrome, a high functioning form of autism, are often stereotyped as distant loners or robotic geeks. But what if what looks like coldness to the outside world is a response to being overwhelmed by emotion – an excess of empathy, not a lack of it?

This idea resonates with many people suffering from autism-spectrum disorders and their families. It also jibes with the “intense world” theory, a new way of thinking about the nature of autism.

As posited by Henry and Kamila Markram of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, the theory suggests that the fundamental problem in autism-spectrum disorders is not a social deficiency but, rather, a hypersensitivity to experience, which includes an overwhelming fear response.

“I can walk into a room and feel what everyone is feeling,” Kamila Markram says. “The problem is that it all comes in faster than I can process it. There are those who say autistic people don’t feel enough. We’re saying exactly the opposite: They feel too much.”

Virtually all people with autism spectrum disorder, or ASD, report various types of over-sensitivity and intense fear. The Markrams argue that social difficulties of those with autism spectrum disorders stem from trying to cope with a world where someone has turned the volume on all the senses and feelings up past 10.

If hearing your parents’ voices while sitting in your crib felt like listening to Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music on acid, you, too, might prefer to curl in a corner and rock.

But, of course, this sort of withdrawal and self-soothing behaviour – repetitive movements; echoing words or actions; failing to make eye contact – interferes with social development. Without the experience other kids get through ordinary social interactions, children on the spectrum never learn to understand subtle signals.

Phil Schwarz, a software developer, is vice-president of the Asperger’s Association of New England and has a child with the condition. He notes that autism is not a unitary condition – “if you’ve seen one Aspie, you’ve seen one Aspie,” he says, using the colloquial term.

But, he adds, “I think most people with ASD feel emotional empathy and care about the welfare of others very deeply.”

So, why do so many people see a lack of empathy as a defining characteristic of autism spectrum disorder?

The problem starts with the complexity of empathy itself. One aspect is simply the ability to see the world from the perspective of another. Another is more emotional – the ability to imagine what the other is feeling and care about their pain as a result.

Autistic children tend to develop the first part of empathy – which is called “theory of mind” – later than other kids. This was established in a classic experiment. Children are asked to watch two puppets, Sally and Anne. Sally takes a marble and places it in a basket, then leaves the stage. While she’s gone, Anne takes the marble out and puts it in a box. The children are then asked: Where will Sally look first for her marble when she returns?

Most 4-year-olds know Sally didn’t see Anne move the marble, so they get it right. By 10 or 11, children with developmental disabilities who have verbal IQs equivalent to 3-year-olds also get it right. But 80 per cent of autistic children age 10 to 11 guess that Sally will look in the box, because they know that’s where the marble is and they don’t realize other people don’t share all of their knowledge.

Of course, if you don’t realize others are seeing and feeling different things, you might well act less caring toward them.

It takes autistic children far longer than children without autism to realize other people have different experiences and perspectives – and the timing of this development varies greatly. But that doesn’t mean, once people with autism spectrum disorder do become aware of other people’s experience, that they don’t care or want to connect.

Schwarz, of the New England Asperger’s association, says all the autistic adults he knows over the age of 18 have a better sense of what others know than the Sally/Anne test suggests.

When it comes to not understanding the inner state of minds too different from our own, most people also do a lousy job, Schwarz says. “But the non-autistic majority gets a free pass because, if they assume that the other person’s mind works like their own, they have a much better chance of being right.”

Thus, when, for example, a child with Asperger’s talks incessantly about his intense interests, he isn’t deliberately dominating the conversation so much as simply failing to consider that there may be a difference between his interests and those of his peers.

In terms of the caring aspect of empathy, a lively discussion that would seem to support the Markrams’ theory appeared on the website for people with autism spectrum disorder called WrongPlanet.net, after a mother wrote to ask whether her empathetic but socially immature daughter could possibly have Asperger’s.

“If anything, I struggle with having too much empathy,” one person says. “If someone else is upset, I am upset. There were times during school when other people were misbehaving and, if the teacher scolded them, I felt like they were scolding me.”

Said another, “I am clueless when it comes to reading subtle cues but I am very empathic. I can walk into a room and feel what everyone is feeling and I think this is actually quite common in AS/autism. The problem is that it all comes in faster than I can process it.”

Studies have found that when people are overwhelmed by empathetic feelings, they tend to pull back. When someone else’s pain affects you deeply, it can be hard to reach out rather than turn away.

For people with autism spectrum disorder, these empathetic feelings might be so intense that they withdraw in a way that appears cold or uncaring.

“These children are really not unemotional. They do want to interact – it’s just difficult for them,” Markram says. “It’s quite sad, because these are quite capable people. But the world is just too intense, so they have to withdraw.”

Aspergers Syndrome, disability aspergers, autism

Autism Ready is a new family resource site by a colleague of mine at Ryerson University… also named Jason. It is interesting to see someone’s new site, since people often don’t do that sort of thing any more. I like to see things in process, under development, not fully polished. I like it especially when the content itself is growing, as it does with their son and family’s exploration of autism.

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I found this on the Wrong Planet website: Missing Qld boy rides bike to Sydney

A 15-year-old Brisbane boy with Asperger’s syndrome who went missing for two weeks has been found in Sydney, after riding his bike more than 950km down the Pacific Highway….

He had as good a reason as any for the epic journey down the east coast on one of Australia’s busiest highways – because he thought he could.

“I just wanted to see if I could get down to Sydney on a bike and how long it was going to take,” Ethan told the Nine Network’s A Current Affair program on Wednesday.

Ethan said he had planned the adventure since November last year and made no apology for failing to call his mum to let her know he was okay.

“At the time, I didn’t want her to know where I was,” he smiled.

His mother, Tammy Johnson, said they had to keep putting a little bit of money in his keycard account each day so that he could continue to eat, but not enough so that he could get further away.

He was last captured on closed circuit television about 9.20am (AEST) on March 30, leaving the Robina train station on the Gold Coast.

“Because we had the CCTV footage, we knew he was safe and the fact that he kept using his keycard as he went along we knew where to find him when he hit Sydney,” she told AAP.

Based on the discussion, it seems that this is a typical aspie thing to do.

Aspergers Syndrome aspergers

Ann Bauer on autism, violence | Salon Life

The monster inside my son
For years I thought of his autism as beautiful and mysterious. But when he turned unspeakably violent, I had to question everything I knew.

By Ann Bauer

I scan the story while standing, my coffee forgotten. Trudy Steuernagel, a faculty member in political science at Kent State, has been murdered and her 18-year-old son, Sky, has been arrested and charged with the crime, though he is profoundly disabled and can neither speak nor understand. Sky, who likes cartoons and chicken nuggets, apparently lost control and beat his mother into a coma. He was sitting in jail when she died.

This happens to be two days after my older son’s 21st birthday, which we marked behind two sets of locked steel doors. I’m exhausted and hopeless and vaguely hung over because Andrew, who has autism, also has evolved from sweet, dreamy boy to something like a golem: bitter, rampaging, full of rage. It happened no matter how fiercely I loved him or how many therapies I employed.

Now, reading about this Ohio mother, there is a moment of slithering nausea and panic followed immediately by a sense of guilty relief.

I am not alone.

This is a profoundly disturbing story. I feel great sympathy for anyone who is a victim of family violence. That’s a given. But this is not an article about family violence. It is an article about autism. And that people with autism become dangerous, and should be locked up. Others say that people with Autism should be subject to therapies that will render them more social, sometimes even recommending electric shocks.

And people wonder why I never got myself assessed when I was a teen? Well, I had a wise teacher named Michael who took me aside and counseled me that it would be better to work on trying to pass as neurotypical than… well, I won’t go into that now. Anyway, it was a success, and through choosing my education very carefully, and being lucky enough to have good mentors, I am where I am.

I feel that, and I’m no expert, that the attempts to normalize people with autism is a ticking time bomb that will explode one way or another. Why wouldn’t that happen when you disrupt the way someone wants to interact with the world and ‘train’ them to model appropriate practice? The best way to cause someone to explode is to wrap them up tight, put them under stress and give them no way to release that pressure. Voila.

The notion that it would be better to have cancer rather than autism is particularly sad to hear, and personally threatening. I can see what Michael was saying when he said don’t get an assessment… that it is worse than cancer. My brother died of cancer. Died in my arms. And we did bone marrow transplants and lots of blood products sharing. So I know what that’s like.

The conclusions of the article are compassionate, “Our adult son’s behavior could be the outcome of living daily in a world where everything hurts and nothing makes sense.” and “Autism does not always equal violence. But I do believe there may be a tragic, blameless relationship.”

So the over all sense of the article is that people who are autistic must be watched for signs… whereas I wonder if there isn’t a relationship between how neurotypical people treat people with autism and violence. If you want to push someone over the edge, and need advice, perhaps the people to ask are those trying to normalize autistic individuals so that they can fit in.

Aspergers Syndrome, Evil aspergers, autism