7 ms·

Post-traumatic stress disorder may mimic autism in some children

82 points by anotherevan 8y ago

pfarnsworth 8y ago
How frustrating that it took so long to get a proper diagnosis and treatment for the child in the article, even though he had multiple diagnoses saying it was PTSD. This is pretty clear that psychology is largely haphazard, which is my own experience with it. It's definitely not as scientific as one would hope, and with such poor funding for mental health issues it only exacerbates the issue.
rjplatte 8y ago
Yay, let's continue diagnosing everything as autism!
edoo 8y ago
Modern psychology and the social sciences are a joke. The scholarship allowed is directly at odds with logic.
- xelxebar 8y ago
  The problem is that a reproduction crisis, on its own, doesn't mean that a field is doing a bad job. With systems that involve lots of moving parts, the prior probability of finding a correct model is just dismally low. Bayes simply guarantees that the vast majority of our positives will be false in this case. We probably need to utilize more sophisticated statistics in this case in order to capture a more nuanced notion of a study's utility. Worse, most of the time I hear people criticize psychology, the person is implicitly using this as an excuse to not critically examine their personal beliefs about how human minds work. Paychology is hard, and we're feelinng around in tye dark, but chemistry had the same problem 300 years ago with ideas like phlogiston theory.
  - briantakita 8y ago
    Much of the criticism relating to psychology is the difference between the expectation of the hype and the correctness & context of the models & research; such as applying the success & authority of other fields of science. What may apply in one context does not apply in another context. Fundamental matters such as qualia vs quanta also apply. For example, one person may act differently in the same situation depending on how much energy one has & what mood that person is in. In chemistry, one can create systems of limited scope (a single chemical reaction). In psychology, it's inherently more difficult to isolate variables (in some contexts it's impossible) due to the complexity of the essence of the domain & the limited information within the model definitions. The more information required of a model, the more expensive it will be to apply. Another issue is the domain language is always changing. Disorders are recategorized on a yearly basis. Some disorders also act as a catchall for symptoms which may have different causes. One can also argue that the expectations of others (e.g. the greater society) is "sick" & projects it's sickness onto individuals that do not fit it's criteria of "good" behavior. Despite the numbers, there's going to be unavoidable subjectivity & cultural/individual presuppositions in the sciences.
  - Spooky23 8y ago
    I think the difference was that nobody was rooting for answers in chemistry. People have all sorts of reasons for getting or not getting a diagnosis.
    - wgerard 8y ago
      I don’t think that’s totally true, and admittedly its somewhat arbitrary where to distinguish chemistry from medicine in this regard, but eg Humorism was a pretty popular theory until (IIRC) a chemist disproved it.
  - edoo 8y ago
    The problem I see is pseudo science is used to build policies that are implemented via the law, aka threat of violence. You have to be very very sure of things if you are going to go down that road. I consider the incorrect application of violence to be the root of most of societies problems.
- claudiawerner 8y ago
  Would you mind elaborating on the social sciences part of your comment, please?
- dang 8y ago
  Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive flamebait to Hacker News. Also, please don't take threads on generic tangents, which are repetitive and therefore less interesting than the specific topic at hand.
crawfordcomeaux 8y ago
I was molested & bullied as a kid, starting between 3-5 years old. It traumatized me. I started withdrawing emotionally into video games and television at age 8 or sooner. I was diagnosed with ADD after 8th grade. I added porn and learning about tech at age 12 to my avoidance habits. I entered into recovery for information, gaming, porn, masturbation, sex, love, and sugar addictions at age 32. I was accused for years of being autistic in some way. Nope...I simply disconnected emotionally at an early age and didn't learn to actually feel my feelings until 20+ years after I was biologically supposed to. Anxiety was my norm and I didn't know it because I didn't know what anxiety was. The fact that I could go so long without basic lessons on what emotions are, how we feel them physically in the body, and what to do with them is a damning commentary on our society. The fact that my trauma went unrecognized as such, even by me, til 32 is a damning commentary on psychology. I've been feeling my feelings for 2.5 years and it started as a direct result of me saying aloud to myself while alone "That traumatized me." The next moment was a flood of emotions, including excitement over whatever this flood of emotions was or could lead to and how weird it was that simply saying words out loud could lead to it. I now think everyone could benefit from making a list of things they think didn't traumatize them that other people have been historically traumatized by before, consider how their personal story lines up with standard stories of denial, and then consider the idea that they were traumatized in ways they don't yet realize while saying "That traumatized me."
- perfmode 8y ago
  Thank you for sharing this.
- kaybe 8y ago
  Is there a list of what people have been historically traumatized from before?
  - crawfordcomeaux 8y ago
    There are. This was one of the first hits from searching "What are examples of traumatic events" (https://keltymentalhealth.ca/post-traumatic-stress-disorder https://keltymentalhealth.ca/post-traumatic-stress-disorder) - domestic or family violence, dating violence - community violence (shooting, mugging, burglary, assault, bullying) - sexual or physical abuse natural disaster such as a hurricane, flood, fire or earthquake - a serious car accident -sudden unexpected or violent death of someone close (suicide, accident) - serious injury (burns, dog attack) - major surgery or life-threatening illness (childhood cancer) - war or political violence (civil war, terrorism, refugee) I'd add to this a few more: - chronic negligence, either from the self, community, or family (if someone's treated like an outcast and/or isn't regularly meeting their needs) - persistent threat to resources (food/job/housing insecurity) - witnessing trauma - psychosocial or cultural enslavement (choosing to hold and/or act on beliefs that don't contribute to making life more wonderful for all life, capitalism) I'm sure there are others. I find it helpful to keep an open mind about trauma and how to define it. I personally consider being born into a capitalistic society without being given the explicit option to enjoy life without direct participation in capitalism to be traumatizing, to some degree. Same goes for being born into a government that doesn't allow for peacefully revoking consent to be governed at any time for any reason. Both can lead to automatic and largely unconscious complicity in violent systems. I think realizing my participation in such systems was traumatic, as well as the responses I get from people when I talk about it. Just today, our landlord told us that because we have a friend staying with us and helping out with our newborn, we need to pay an extra $50/month. Their reason for the added rent is explicitly and purely out of disagreement with how we live our lives and their projections on our friend as being homeless. We've already dealt with this sort of nonsense, so we've grown through the trauma of having loved ones (and, yes, we love our landlords) try to punish us for our way of life or shame us into changing. Most people haven't and this could've easily been an event that feeds into a cycle of housing insecurity or social exclusion. Basically, did one or more of someone's need go unmet/denied in a big way or for a long time? Probably trauma. I don't think there's harm in assuming trauma when there isn't any, as long as the reason for doing so is to heal from it, which includes forgiving all those involved and finding gratitude for the event because I learned to better identify & meet my needs from it. If assuming trauma to judge others, I'd stop and reflect on why that is; there's likely a different trauma in myself that's been activated leading me to want to lash out at others. Often times, like when I've realized ways I contributed to systems of violence, the prescription that helps with that kind of trauma is mourning/grieving. I've also heard therapists say "It was trauma if you say it was," meaning it's up to the individual to determine the impact of something. Unfortunately, this can lead to denial when someone carries a default of judging others as good/bad. A friend grew up being whipped harshly by their dad and strapped into their bed at night against their will. This had a lasting impression on them emotionally & they wouldn't admit to it, possibly because they heavily subscribed to black-and-white thinking & viewing their parents as having traumatized them would've required labeling people they love as bad. I suspect this is one reason why so much trauma goes unreported: people have mindsets that promote denial. Acceptance is a key to healing from trauma for this reason.
MithrilTuxedo 8y ago
My girlfriend is a child and family therapist, a public school teacher in a special needs class before that. They didn't mention this in grad school, but she started figuring out kids had attachment disorders related to PTSD instead of their original autism diagnoses while she was still interning. It didn't sound like it was that big a revelation. It sounded like it's a pretty common misdiagnosis.
- stonecraftwolf 8y ago
  Wondering if this was true for girls as well as boys. Boys tend to be diagnosed at higher rates, though the prevalence is — now — understood to be the same. For years girls and women went undiagnosed with both conditions. It was only after Van der Kolk characterized PTSD in male veterans that he noticed his female patients — who had never been to war, but were subject to many other kinds of abuse - exhibited similar symptoms. We’re still learning about how different kinds of trauma effect the neuroendocrine system, and gender bias makes it harder to study. I’m very much hoping those biases can be corrected in future medical research (and indeed, I know many younger researchers are acutely aware of the problem and are working to rectify it).
DoreenMichele 8y ago
"Autism" winds up being a catch-all category for all kinds of social challenges. The label is frequently a means to largely write someone off because real help would be too much work. One thing you frequently see in severe cases is faceblindness. Faceblindness is itself seriously socially impairing. All other things being equal, a faceblind person will have greater social challenges than a non-faceblind person. If you can identify the myriad specific things going on with a socially impaired person and address each of them, that's usually more effective than calling their social impairment "autism".
- LifeQuestioner 8y ago
  There are many other parts of Autism that are prominent, for example sensory atypicalities. I've never met a person with autism without them.
  - nicoburns 8y ago
    There's a book called The Reason I Jump written by a non-verbal autistic boy (dictated by pointing at a printed keyboard), where he describes being able to understand most things (except at times where he is overloaded by sensory stimuli), but is often unable to control his response as he wishes. This has lead me to believe that sensory-motor differences may be the primary difference between autistic and neurotypical people.
    - LifeQuestioner 8y ago
      Yes. I wrote my thesis on creating a piece of autism technology to teach people what it was like to have Autism. And through my work I came to the same conclusion.
  - stonecraftwolf 8y ago
    But you also see this in cases of developmental trauma / CPTSD. There is some relation between the two conditions, but it is certainly not simple.
TazeTSchnitzel 8y ago
Child abuse at the hands of parents creates (C)PTSD. But there is a huge incentive to, well, not tell parents they've done a bad job. And parents can be trusted too much and conceal things, or sabotage the process (if the psychiatrist gets suspicious, they stop being seen).
- hnuser355 8y ago
  This last part can be very true in some circumstances, unfortunately
- goblin89 8y ago
  Could the psychiatrist silently report suspected abuse to relevant third parties, while continuing to provide the service to the family?
pishpash 8y ago
More provocatively, is there really autism or is it all PTSD and various early attachment disorders?
- tomhoward 8y ago
  I’m willing to believe this, having paid a lot of attention to the topic over the past few years.
  - privong 8y ago
    > I’m willing to believe this, having paid a lot of attention to the topic over the past few years. Can you elaborate on this? Some more information and/or references would be helpful.
    - tomhoward 8y ago
      It's all rather nebulous and controversial, so it's hard to point to specific sources that would easily convince someone new to the topic. It would take a lot of effort and personal investment, which I've been motivated to make due to my own life challenges. A couple of noteworthy authors/speakers on the topic are Dr. Gabor Maté and Dr. Bruce Lipton. Dr. Maté is a mainstream physician who was born into a Jewish family in Hungary just as the Nazis were occupying. Through his career he has closely studied the role of early life trauma in long-term behavioural and physiological illness. Here's an article he wrote about autism [1]. He's written a bunch of books about links between trauma and long-term health outcomes [2]. Dr. Lipton was a pioneering stem cell biologist in the 70s and 80s, who became particularly interested in the role of experience/belief/trauma on behavioural and physiological outcomes. In his book, The Biology of Belief [3], he covers the statistical link between early life trauma and autism, and proposes a biological basis for it. Lipton is a controversial figure who is easily ridiculed by mainstream medicine devotees as he gets handwavy about quantum physics and has become involved with the new age spirituality movement. But, having applied his ideas very successfully in my own life over the past few years, I can attest that what he's right about is more important than what he might be wrong about. [1] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/autism-is-the-child-of-social-disconnection/article773077/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/autism-is-the-child-... [2] https://www.amazon.com/Gabor-Mat%C3%A9/e/B001IO9TH2 https://www.amazon.com/Gabor-Mat%C3%A9/e/B001IO9TH2 [3] https://www.amazon.com/Biology-Belief-10th-Anniversary-Consciousness/dp/140195247X https://www.amazon.com/Biology-Belief-10th-Anniversary-Consc...
LifeQuestioner 8y ago
I think most people here have absolutely no idea of the diagnostic criteria and how diagnosis works, so are not really fit to comment.
- throwawaymath 8y ago
  It's refreshing to see a comment like this. My default stance on most topics, even those which I am nominally educated in, is to have no opinion. My rule of thumb is to consciously abstain from having an opinion about a thing unless I know I can authoritatively speak at some length about the subject. To repurpose a comment in another thread about nuclear fusion: online discussions about autism generally consist of the Wikipedia-educated debating the Youtube-educated. Likewise for topics like ADHD and sociopathy. It would be nice if more people defaulted to, "I'm not really fit to comment" rather than, "I have strong opinions after reading a few pages and talking with friends about this."
  - LifeQuestioner 8y ago
    That's nice of you to say. It might be that I know enough to know that I know nothing. I've worked in academia and Neuroscience, have studied Autism for my masters and created technology to teach people about Autism. Have volunteered in an adhd charity, worked around clinicians and neuropsychologists and had countless discussions on the topic of diagnosis. All I can conclude, is even these guys can't establish the correct way to diagnose and it changes often. I have no chance. PTSD and Autism are both extremely complex. And, the new DSM-V is very controversial.

82 points by anotherevan 8y ago

How frustrating that it took so long to get a proper diagnosis and treatment for the child in the article, even though he had multiple diagnoses saying it was PTSD. This is pretty clear that psychology is largely haphazard, which is my own experience with it. It's definitely not as scientific as one would hope, and with such poor funding for mental health issues it only exacerbates the issue.

rjplatte 8y ago

Yay, let's continue diagnosing everything as autism!

edoo 8y ago

Modern psychology and the social sciences are a joke. The scholarship allowed is directly at odds with logic.

xelxebar 8y ago
The problem is that a reproduction crisis, on its own, doesn't mean that a field is doing a bad job. With systems that involve lots of moving parts, the prior probability of finding a correct model is just dismally low. Bayes simply guarantees that the vast majority of our positives will be false in this case. We probably need to utilize more sophisticated statistics in this case in order to capture a more nuanced notion of a study's utility. Worse, most of the time I hear people criticize psychology, the person is implicitly using this as an excuse to not critically examine their personal beliefs about how human minds work. Paychology is hard, and we're feelinng around in tye dark, but chemistry had the same problem 300 years ago with ideas like phlogiston theory.
- briantakita 8y ago
  Much of the criticism relating to psychology is the difference between the expectation of the hype and the correctness & context of the models & research; such as applying the success & authority of other fields of science. What may apply in one context does not apply in another context. Fundamental matters such as qualia vs quanta also apply. For example, one person may act differently in the same situation depending on how much energy one has & what mood that person is in. In chemistry, one can create systems of limited scope (a single chemical reaction). In psychology, it's inherently more difficult to isolate variables (in some contexts it's impossible) due to the complexity of the essence of the domain & the limited information within the model definitions. The more information required of a model, the more expensive it will be to apply. Another issue is the domain language is always changing. Disorders are recategorized on a yearly basis. Some disorders also act as a catchall for symptoms which may have different causes. One can also argue that the expectations of others (e.g. the greater society) is "sick" & projects it's sickness onto individuals that do not fit it's criteria of "good" behavior. Despite the numbers, there's going to be unavoidable subjectivity & cultural/individual presuppositions in the sciences.
- Spooky23 8y ago
  I think the difference was that nobody was rooting for answers in chemistry. People have all sorts of reasons for getting or not getting a diagnosis.
  - wgerard 8y ago
    I don’t think that’s totally true, and admittedly its somewhat arbitrary where to distinguish chemistry from medicine in this regard, but eg Humorism was a pretty popular theory until (IIRC) a chemist disproved it.
- edoo 8y ago
  The problem I see is pseudo science is used to build policies that are implemented via the law, aka threat of violence. You have to be very very sure of things if you are going to go down that road. I consider the incorrect application of violence to be the root of most of societies problems.
claudiawerner 8y ago
Would you mind elaborating on the social sciences part of your comment, please?
dang 8y ago
Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive flamebait to Hacker News. Also, please don't take threads on generic tangents, which are repetitive and therefore less interesting than the specific topic at hand.

crawfordcomeaux 8y ago

I was molested & bullied as a kid, starting between 3-5 years old. It traumatized me. I started withdrawing emotionally into video games and television at age 8 or sooner. I was diagnosed with ADD after 8th grade. I added porn and learning about tech at age 12 to my avoidance habits. I entered into recovery for information, gaming, porn, masturbation, sex, love, and sugar addictions at age 32. I was accused for years of being autistic in some way. Nope...I simply disconnected emotionally at an early age and didn't learn to actually feel my feelings until 20+ years after I was biologically supposed to. Anxiety was my norm and I didn't know it because I didn't know what anxiety was. The fact that I could go so long without basic lessons on what emotions are, how we feel them physically in the body, and what to do with them is a damning commentary on our society. The fact that my trauma went unrecognized as such, even by me, til 32 is a damning commentary on psychology. I've been feeling my feelings for 2.5 years and it started as a direct result of me saying aloud to myself while alone "That traumatized me." The next moment was a flood of emotions, including excitement over whatever this flood of emotions was or could lead to and how weird it was that simply saying words out loud could lead to it. I now think everyone could benefit from making a list of things they think didn't traumatize them that other people have been historically traumatized by before, consider how their personal story lines up with standard stories of denial, and then consider the idea that they were traumatized in ways they don't yet realize while saying "That traumatized me."

perfmode 8y ago
Thank you for sharing this.
kaybe 8y ago
Is there a list of what people have been historically traumatized from before?
- crawfordcomeaux 8y ago
  There are. This was one of the first hits from searching "What are examples of traumatic events" (https://keltymentalhealth.ca/post-traumatic-stress-disorder https://keltymentalhealth.ca/post-traumatic-stress-disorder) - domestic or family violence, dating violence - community violence (shooting, mugging, burglary, assault, bullying) - sexual or physical abuse natural disaster such as a hurricane, flood, fire or earthquake - a serious car accident -sudden unexpected or violent death of someone close (suicide, accident) - serious injury (burns, dog attack) - major surgery or life-threatening illness (childhood cancer) - war or political violence (civil war, terrorism, refugee) I'd add to this a few more: - chronic negligence, either from the self, community, or family (if someone's treated like an outcast and/or isn't regularly meeting their needs) - persistent threat to resources (food/job/housing insecurity) - witnessing trauma - psychosocial or cultural enslavement (choosing to hold and/or act on beliefs that don't contribute to making life more wonderful for all life, capitalism) I'm sure there are others. I find it helpful to keep an open mind about trauma and how to define it. I personally consider being born into a capitalistic society without being given the explicit option to enjoy life without direct participation in capitalism to be traumatizing, to some degree. Same goes for being born into a government that doesn't allow for peacefully revoking consent to be governed at any time for any reason. Both can lead to automatic and largely unconscious complicity in violent systems. I think realizing my participation in such systems was traumatic, as well as the responses I get from people when I talk about it. Just today, our landlord told us that because we have a friend staying with us and helping out with our newborn, we need to pay an extra $50/month. Their reason for the added rent is explicitly and purely out of disagreement with how we live our lives and their projections on our friend as being homeless. We've already dealt with this sort of nonsense, so we've grown through the trauma of having loved ones (and, yes, we love our landlords) try to punish us for our way of life or shame us into changing. Most people haven't and this could've easily been an event that feeds into a cycle of housing insecurity or social exclusion. Basically, did one or more of someone's need go unmet/denied in a big way or for a long time? Probably trauma. I don't think there's harm in assuming trauma when there isn't any, as long as the reason for doing so is to heal from it, which includes forgiving all those involved and finding gratitude for the event because I learned to better identify & meet my needs from it. If assuming trauma to judge others, I'd stop and reflect on why that is; there's likely a different trauma in myself that's been activated leading me to want to lash out at others. Often times, like when I've realized ways I contributed to systems of violence, the prescription that helps with that kind of trauma is mourning/grieving. I've also heard therapists say "It was trauma if you say it was," meaning it's up to the individual to determine the impact of something. Unfortunately, this can lead to denial when someone carries a default of judging others as good/bad. A friend grew up being whipped harshly by their dad and strapped into their bed at night against their will. This had a lasting impression on them emotionally & they wouldn't admit to it, possibly because they heavily subscribed to black-and-white thinking & viewing their parents as having traumatized them would've required labeling people they love as bad. I suspect this is one reason why so much trauma goes unreported: people have mindsets that promote denial. Acceptance is a key to healing from trauma for this reason.

MithrilTuxedo 8y ago

My girlfriend is a child and family therapist, a public school teacher in a special needs class before that. They didn't mention this in grad school, but she started figuring out kids had attachment disorders related to PTSD instead of their original autism diagnoses while she was still interning. It didn't sound like it was that big a revelation. It sounded like it's a pretty common misdiagnosis.

stonecraftwolf 8y ago
Wondering if this was true for girls as well as boys. Boys tend to be diagnosed at higher rates, though the prevalence is — now — understood to be the same. For years girls and women went undiagnosed with both conditions. It was only after Van der Kolk characterized PTSD in male veterans that he noticed his female patients — who had never been to war, but were subject to many other kinds of abuse - exhibited similar symptoms. We’re still learning about how different kinds of trauma effect the neuroendocrine system, and gender bias makes it harder to study. I’m very much hoping those biases can be corrected in future medical research (and indeed, I know many younger researchers are acutely aware of the problem and are working to rectify it).

DoreenMichele 8y ago

"Autism" winds up being a catch-all category for all kinds of social challenges. The label is frequently a means to largely write someone off because real help would be too much work. One thing you frequently see in severe cases is faceblindness. Faceblindness is itself seriously socially impairing. All other things being equal, a faceblind person will have greater social challenges than a non-faceblind person. If you can identify the myriad specific things going on with a socially impaired person and address each of them, that's usually more effective than calling their social impairment "autism".

LifeQuestioner 8y ago
There are many other parts of Autism that are prominent, for example sensory atypicalities. I've never met a person with autism without them.
- nicoburns 8y ago
  There's a book called The Reason I Jump written by a non-verbal autistic boy (dictated by pointing at a printed keyboard), where he describes being able to understand most things (except at times where he is overloaded by sensory stimuli), but is often unable to control his response as he wishes. This has lead me to believe that sensory-motor differences may be the primary difference between autistic and neurotypical people.
  - LifeQuestioner 8y ago
    Yes. I wrote my thesis on creating a piece of autism technology to teach people what it was like to have Autism. And through my work I came to the same conclusion.
- stonecraftwolf 8y ago
  But you also see this in cases of developmental trauma / CPTSD. There is some relation between the two conditions, but it is certainly not simple.

TazeTSchnitzel 8y ago

Child abuse at the hands of parents creates (C)PTSD. But there is a huge incentive to, well, not tell parents they've done a bad job. And parents can be trusted too much and conceal things, or sabotage the process (if the psychiatrist gets suspicious, they stop being seen).

hnuser355 8y ago
This last part can be very true in some circumstances, unfortunately
goblin89 8y ago
Could the psychiatrist silently report suspected abuse to relevant third parties, while continuing to provide the service to the family?

pishpash 8y ago

More provocatively, is there really autism or is it all PTSD and various early attachment disorders?

tomhoward 8y ago
I’m willing to believe this, having paid a lot of attention to the topic over the past few years.
- privong 8y ago
  > I’m willing to believe this, having paid a lot of attention to the topic over the past few years. Can you elaborate on this? Some more information and/or references would be helpful.
  - tomhoward 8y ago
    It's all rather nebulous and controversial, so it's hard to point to specific sources that would easily convince someone new to the topic. It would take a lot of effort and personal investment, which I've been motivated to make due to my own life challenges. A couple of noteworthy authors/speakers on the topic are Dr. Gabor Maté and Dr. Bruce Lipton. Dr. Maté is a mainstream physician who was born into a Jewish family in Hungary just as the Nazis were occupying. Through his career he has closely studied the role of early life trauma in long-term behavioural and physiological illness. Here's an article he wrote about autism [1]. He's written a bunch of books about links between trauma and long-term health outcomes [2]. Dr. Lipton was a pioneering stem cell biologist in the 70s and 80s, who became particularly interested in the role of experience/belief/trauma on behavioural and physiological outcomes. In his book, The Biology of Belief [3], he covers the statistical link between early life trauma and autism, and proposes a biological basis for it. Lipton is a controversial figure who is easily ridiculed by mainstream medicine devotees as he gets handwavy about quantum physics and has become involved with the new age spirituality movement. But, having applied his ideas very successfully in my own life over the past few years, I can attest that what he's right about is more important than what he might be wrong about. [1] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/autism-is-the-child-of-social-disconnection/article773077/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/autism-is-the-child-... [2] https://www.amazon.com/Gabor-Mat%C3%A9/e/B001IO9TH2 https://www.amazon.com/Gabor-Mat%C3%A9/e/B001IO9TH2 [3] https://www.amazon.com/Biology-Belief-10th-Anniversary-Consciousness/dp/140195247X https://www.amazon.com/Biology-Belief-10th-Anniversary-Consc...

LifeQuestioner 8y ago

I think most people here have absolutely no idea of the diagnostic criteria and how diagnosis works, so are not really fit to comment.

throwawaymath 8y ago
It's refreshing to see a comment like this. My default stance on most topics, even those which I am nominally educated in, is to have no opinion. My rule of thumb is to consciously abstain from having an opinion about a thing unless I know I can authoritatively speak at some length about the subject. To repurpose a comment in another thread about nuclear fusion: online discussions about autism generally consist of the Wikipedia-educated debating the Youtube-educated. Likewise for topics like ADHD and sociopathy. It would be nice if more people defaulted to, "I'm not really fit to comment" rather than, "I have strong opinions after reading a few pages and talking with friends about this."
- LifeQuestioner 8y ago
  That's nice of you to say. It might be that I know enough to know that I know nothing. I've worked in academia and Neuroscience, have studied Autism for my masters and created technology to teach people about Autism. Have volunteered in an adhd charity, worked around clinicians and neuropsychologists and had countless discussions on the topic of diagnosis. All I can conclude, is even these guys can't establish the correct way to diagnose and it changes often. I have no chance. PTSD and Autism are both extremely complex. And, the new DSM-V is very controversial.