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Having ASD, I get an extra bit offended at the whole movement. It's true that I needed some therapy when I was younger and needed to learn techniques to cope with stress (which are pretty useful for non-autistic people too), but these days I have a job, an education, a partner and a decent social life, just like lots of autistics. And these people would rather risk their children dying horribly or being severely injured from infectious, entirely preventable diseases than growing up to be like us. Thanks, I guess.
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Mar 26, 2014 00:14
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Cache Cab posted:I understand that some kids might get sick and maybe even die due to a lack of herd immunity, but how many are having mental issues from unregulated substances we're injecting into them? E-Tank posted:Its less that, and more lacking in knowledge of exactly how dangerous diseases are. A mother hears that your child might be turn autistic if you get him vaccinated thinks "Well, if he gets sick I can take him to the doctor and we can get medicine for that sickness. . . but autism has no cure and that's *FOREVER!*" Nessus posted:It would perhaps be more accurate to say that the logic is: "I would rather have a dead child than a child with a mental disability." I can tell you that this sure makes a lot of the adults with autism feel grand about themselves. This right here is why we need to deal with the stigma surrounding mental illness and neuro-developmental disorders. Autism and other mental illnesses aren't the end of the world. There is no shame in being ill, or having someone in your family with an illness. It can be very difficult and scary for the patient and their family, and having had bipolar disorder and being autistic myself, I won't pretend they're easy. But there has been a lot of progress in psychiatric medicine (although I'd be interested to know how many anti-vaxxers don't believe in psychiatry either). Even without pharmaceuticals, lots of useful therapy techniques have been developed like CBT, relaxation therapy and meditation to deal with the stress and fear/rage autistics sometimes get when we're overstimulated or nervous. Yes, there is no cure for autism, but once you know you or your kid has it, there are ways to deal with it. A bunch of autistics in my hometown used to go to a class for learning how to read facial expressions and gestures, and we practised amateur dramatics and public speaking to test it out. Hell, all kids need to be taught social interactions, like table manners, appropriate language and when to say "please" and "thank-you", autistics just pick it up more slowly and don't have any natural instinct to base it off. But we can learn. Now my friends and I are grown up and have had years of practice at putting ourselves in social situations and making ourselves get out and talk to people and join in, most people can't even tell we're autistic. And forcing yourself to stop and think: "How does the person I'm interacting with feel right now? How would I feel if I were them?" isn't a bad habit to get into, autistic or not. An interesting thing about autism - it usually starts to manifest itself at around 12-16 months, which is about the same time kids get the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, so it's easy to blame the vaccine. But autistic people's brains are a different shape to other people's, and while brains are always developing and re-moulding, a few weeks or months is not nearly long enough for such a huge change to take place. The prevailing theory so far is that it's genetic, which I can well believe: when I was diagnosed the psychiatrist talked with me and my mother for a long time together to take a family history and (with confirmation from other specialists) ended up diagnosing her and most of the family too! I guess we all just thought it was normal to suck at reading people and be really into a favourite hobby. Also, the increase in autism diagnoses is unrelated to the increase in vaccinations. Asperger's Syndrome and other similar conditions are now classed as autistic spectrum disorders, which accounts for some of the increase; more autistic girls are being diagnosed whereas previously they were mis-diagnosed with OCD (and it still tends to take girls longer to be diagnosed than boys); and we have a better understanding and awareness of autism now and can identify it more easily.
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Mar 26, 2014 21:10
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