3 ms·

I've spent a long time in disability communities, falsifiability gets very little respect, and "gatekeeping" is generally expressly or implicitly taboo. So wit

I've spent a long time in disability communities, falsifiability gets very little respect, and "gatekeeping" is generally expressly or implicitly taboo. So with Autism, probably the most common disqualifier in practice is that the disorder requires childhood presentation and a lot of people don't know this. So somebody will come in, say "oh I wasn't autistic at all as a child, but I felt very autistic as a teenager, so I asked a doctor, and he said I wasn't autistic". People will respond with "oh, doctors don't know anything about autism, they underdiagnose minorities and women all the time, that proves it" and "oh, women actually don't present as autistic in childhood, they can just be masking, but that doesn't mean they aren't actually autistic". This happens EVERY time, especially if a woman is involved, and means that you can't falsify the idea that somebody was autistic in childhood. I have been banned once for saying that disabled people should doubt other peoples disabilities (on the grounds of preventing exploitation and misallocation of resources), I got told that I was spreading ableist myths that disabled people are responsible for other disabled people lacking resources, that I was reinforcing the ableist myth that disabled people are just exploiting non-disabled people (of course, disabled people do just as much for the able as the able do for them, and thus there is no advantage to faking disability), that it was inappropriate to talk about doubting disabilities on an autism community, and that they wished I had a number of painful disabilities that I couldn't receive pain medication for because I wasn't believed.

watwut 4y ago
You are treating "not presenting symptoms as kids" and "not being diagnosed as a kid" interchangeably.
- faeriechangling 4y ago
  I'm not, I'm in no way saying that explicitly or implicitly. I do not even remotely conflate these two things. It is possible to show symptoms as a child, not get diagnosed as a child, and get diagnosed as an adult. I have zero issue with that. Here's the exact phrasing of the criteria https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/hcp-dsm.html https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/hcp-dsm.html >Symptoms must be present in the early developmental period (but may not become fully manifest until social demands exceed limited capacities, or may be masked by learned strategies in later life). There's nothing in the diagnosis that says you need to be diagnosed as a child. I adamantly do not believe that's required for a diagnosis in any way shape or form.
  - anotherman554 4y ago
    There might be a difference between medicine as written and medicine as practiced. Suppose a psychiatrist talks to a patient and confirms they have every symptom. Clearly a textbook case, except the patient says "I was symptom free in childhood." Does the psychiatrist conclude the patient doesn't meet the criteria, or does the psychiatrist conclude the patient wasn't self aware enough in childhood to know if they exhibited symptoms so a diagnosis is warranted?
    - faeriechangling 4y ago
      Well no, the psychiatrist has options here, they could try to interview the parents or the teacher of the child and ask them what they remember. It's always helpful if a psychiatrist goes through the trouble of making a stronger case than "They must just not remember how autistic they were as a kid, so therefore, they had autism symptoms as a child". They're making a diagnosis with legal weight, a diagnosis that entitles you to various forms of government assistance.
      - anotherman554 4y ago
        Perhaps I misunderstood what you were talking about above. I thought you were talking about a diagnosis for treatment purposes, if you were talking about a formal diagnosis for government assistance, that's a different conversation. A diagnosis for treatment purposes does not entitle you to government assistance. People are only entitled to government assistance if they meet a "legal" standard about the severity of the illness.

watwut 4y ago

You are treating "not presenting symptoms as kids" and "not being diagnosed as a kid" interchangeably.

faeriechangling 4y ago
I'm not, I'm in no way saying that explicitly or implicitly. I do not even remotely conflate these two things. It is possible to show symptoms as a child, not get diagnosed as a child, and get diagnosed as an adult. I have zero issue with that. Here's the exact phrasing of the criteria https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/hcp-dsm.html https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/hcp-dsm.html >Symptoms must be present in the early developmental period (but may not become fully manifest until social demands exceed limited capacities, or may be masked by learned strategies in later life). There's nothing in the diagnosis that says you need to be diagnosed as a child. I adamantly do not believe that's required for a diagnosis in any way shape or form.
- anotherman554 4y ago
  There might be a difference between medicine as written and medicine as practiced. Suppose a psychiatrist talks to a patient and confirms they have every symptom. Clearly a textbook case, except the patient says "I was symptom free in childhood." Does the psychiatrist conclude the patient doesn't meet the criteria, or does the psychiatrist conclude the patient wasn't self aware enough in childhood to know if they exhibited symptoms so a diagnosis is warranted?
  - faeriechangling 4y ago
    Well no, the psychiatrist has options here, they could try to interview the parents or the teacher of the child and ask them what they remember. It's always helpful if a psychiatrist goes through the trouble of making a stronger case than "They must just not remember how autistic they were as a kid, so therefore, they had autism symptoms as a child". They're making a diagnosis with legal weight, a diagnosis that entitles you to various forms of government assistance.
    - anotherman554 4y ago
      Perhaps I misunderstood what you were talking about above. I thought you were talking about a diagnosis for treatment purposes, if you were talking about a formal diagnosis for government assistance, that's a different conversation. A diagnosis for treatment purposes does not entitle you to government assistance. People are only entitled to government assistance if they meet a "legal" standard about the severity of the illness.