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Comment by stonyrubbish | Hacker News Reader

> How is this different from other disorders, disabilities, illnesses?

Part of the confusion here is that autism isn't straightforwardly a disability. A plurality of people with autism are ASD-1, which is the kind requiring the least support needs while, purely empirically speaking, conferring lots of well-documented benefits. The sort of elephant in the room in these conversations is that there are lots of replicable studies which show that autistic people outperform non-autistic people in a variety of areas. The idea of attempting to engineer the removal of a class of people from society-- people with unique strengths which are necessary for the functioning of that society-- has consequences that are significantly less well-understood than proponents of this idea make it out to be.

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I agree up until this point:

> The idea of attempting to engineer the removal of a class of people from society-- people with unique strengths which are necessary for the functioning of that society-- has consequences that are significantly less well-understood than proponents of this idea make it out to be.

I'll be the first to pick up my pitchforks at anyone who suggests non-consensual treatments. My point is that trying to find a cure for something is different from trying to eradicate people from a gene pool.

In fact, I would assume that having an effective treatment/cure for autism would make it more widespread, not less. People who were cured of their ASD-related deficits would be far more likely to find a partner and have kids, and those kids would inherit genes which are responsible for ASD.

You don't need a big bad government or other outside entity to have non-consensual treatments. Just make it available to parents, who can make decisions for their children regardless of their wishes or any nuances of the situation. They won't allow kids to grow up and choose for themselves.

Does being autistic decrease your chances of finding a partner? That feels like something that should be substantiated, because although it feels logical that a deficiency in communication would lead to this, in reality I just see autistic people seeking each other explicitly or even subconsciously by being inclined toward their own traits.

I think a stronger argument is that there are more severe instances of autism that are disabling while providing few benefits of 'mild' or 'normal' autism.

> Does being autistic decrease your chances of finding a partner?

Yes, absolutely. A tiny minority of people with autism are married.

The majority are unemployed.

Suicidal ideation and attempts are something like 1 in 3 (!!)

I think brushing all of this off with "it's not you, it's the society" is a dismissive and harmful attitude, even if it might turn out to be "technically correct".

Correction: people with an autism diagnosis. You are much more likely to get a diagnosis if you are in contact with the psychiatric healthcare system (e.g. if you are suicidal)

Any statistics done on the subset of autistic people with a diagnosis would therefore be skewed towards the mean of the subset of the general population who are in contact with the psychiatric system

There's a huge number of undiagnosed - estimates range between 90%-98% of people who would fit the criteria for ASD remain undiagnosed. These people remain undiagnosed because they generally live normal lives with jobs, wives, husbands, children, pets, and so on, which provides a support system to help them with the challenges they face

The group of undiagnosed autistic people are however much more likely to be underemployed, i.e. they employed in a much lower position than their education and experience would generally suggest. This is due to the systemic issues they face caused by a lack of accommodations which naturally increases the risk of them having a mental health crisis that puts them in contact with the psychiatric system

Something, something, kettle, something, something, pot

My son is autistic. He massively struggles with life. I weep sometimes after some of his meltdowns, where he says he hates himself and wishes he didn't exist.

We do our best, and I hope we can help him learn the correct coping mechanisms. But reading some of the posts here make me quite enraged. He has a medical condition. It is called ASD. Would I medicate him if it meant he had a better chance of living a happier life? In a blink.

I'm genuinely sorry to hear that your son is struggling. I cannot comprehend how difficult and stressful that must be for you as a parent

I can however speak to what it's like being autistic and what would have helped me growing up - and it's wasn't medicine

I had my share of meltdowns and they were pretty much exclusively caused by being forced to fit into a rigid school system where my "weirdness" was punished by both teachers and my classmates

What I needed was teachers who had been educated in supporting neurodivergent children, a safe space where I could have gone when I needed to decompress, an academic schedule that was geared towards my needs, and counselling to help me navigate a society that is designed by and for neurotypical people

That my brain is wired differently than it is in a neurotypical person is not a medical condition

What enrages me is when I'm treated as if I'm somehow broken and need fixing. I'm sick and tired of being discriminated against and I'm even more tired of people arguing that it's somehow a super power

My needs and preferences might be different from other people, but I'm still just a person and that's what I'd like to be treated as

As a child, if I had been taking medication that would have alleviated the sheer terror I felt when the wrong foods were touching in school that lead to a meltdown, due to being totally overstimulated, I could have navigated the school system a bit better.

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