User:PsychoNerd054/Autism

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This guide is all about the 'tism, as explained by an actual autist.

Please understand that despite me having this "ailment" myself, this by no means entails that I understand the condition in its entirety, nor does that mean I know or can predict the needs of every other autist. Everything I say here is solely based on my experiences and what I've researched. I am also not creating this in order to make some big statement about autism, such as how autistic people should be treated, how not all autists are like Chris, how he gives other autistic people a "bad name", or how I or anyone else with the condition is inherently better or worse than him just because of what ways he struggles personally. I'm creating this whole thing with the intent of assisting others in viewing the condition through a more objective lens, and so that one can possibly better understand the protagonist of our tale, and some of the other people in his life who have the same "ailment" as he.

Diagnostic Criteria

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) officially defines autism as a "neurological and developmental disorder that affects how people interact with others, communicate, learn, and behave." People with the condition also have a wide range of symptoms. These can include differences in communication, intellectual abilities, and other mental and physical conditions. As a result, various people with the condition need varying levels of health care and service needs. This makes it somewhat difficult to pinpoint what exactly makes a person "autistic", so several institutes use fairly broad descriptors in order to describe those with the condition and diagnose them as such. For this guide, I will be going off of both the NIMH definition and DSM-5 criteria particularly.

DSM-5 Criteria

According to the DSM-5 criteria for autism, the condition is diagnosed if one fits the following three criteria:

1. Difficulties in social emotional reciprocity, including trouble with social approach, back and forth conversation, sharing interests with others, and expressing/understanding emotions.
2. Difficulties in nonverbal communication used for social interaction including abnormal eye-contact and body language and difficulty with understanding the use of nonverbal communication like facial expressions or gestures for communication.
3. Deficits in developing and maintaining relationships with other people (other than with caregivers), including lack of interest in others, difficulties responding to different social contexts, and difficulties in sharing imaginative play with others.

The DSM-5 criteria also requires one to demonstrate at least 2 of the 4 repetitive patterns, interests or behaviors:

1. Stereotyped speech, repetitive motor movements, echolalia (repeating words or phrases, sometimes from television shows or from other people), and repetitive use of objects or abnormal phrases.
2. Rigid adherence to routines, ritualized patterns of verbal or nonverbal behaviors, and extreme resistance to change (such as insistence on taking the same route to school, eating the same food because of color or texture, repeating the same questions); the individual may become greatly distressed at small changes in these routines.
3. Highly restricted interests with abnormal intensity or focus, such as a strong attachment to unusual objects or obsessions with certain interests, such as train schedules.
4. Increased or decreased reactivity to sensory input or unusual interest in sensory aspects of the environment, such as not reacting to pain, strong dislike to specific sounds, excessive touching or smelling objects, or fascination with spinning objects.

Somewhere along the line, the criteria added a "severity rating", identifying the "severity" of autism an individual has.

Severity Level	Communication	Repetitive Behaviors
Level 1 "Requiring support"	Without supports in place, deficits in social communication cause noticeable impairments. Difficulty initiating social interactions, and clear examples of atypical or unsuccessful responses to social overtures from others. May appear to have decreased interest in social interactions. For example, a person who is able to speak in full sentences and engages in communication but whose to-and-fro conversation with others fails, and whose attempts to make friends are odd and typically unsuccessful.	Inflexibility of behavior causes significant interference with functioning in one or more contexts. Difficulty switching between activities. Problems of organization and planning hamper independence.
Level 2 "Requiring substantial support"	Marked deficits in verbal and nonverbal social communication skills, social impairments apparent even with supports in place; limited initiation of social interactions; and reduced or abnormal responses to social overtures from others. For example, a person who speaks in simple sentences whose interaction is limited to narrow special interests, and who has markedly odd nonverbal communication.	Inflexibility of behavior, difficulty coping with change, or other restricted/repetitive behaviors appear frequently enough to be obvious to the casual observer and interfere with functioning in a variety of contexts. Distress and/or difficulty changing focus or action.
Level 3 "Requiring very substantial support"	Severe deficits in verbal and nonverbal social communication skills cause severe impairments in functioning, very limited initiation of social interactions, and minimal response to social overtures from others. For example, a person with few words of intelligible speech who rarely initiates interaction and, when he or she does, makes unusual approaches to meet needs only and responds to only very direct social approaches.	Inflexibility of behavior, extreme difficulty coping with change, or other restricted/repetitive behaviors markedly interferes with functioning in all spheres. Great distress/difficulty changing focus or action.

Autism as a "Spectrum"

Autism has always been understood as a "spectrum". For the sake of example, we can compare this "spectrum" as akin to something more familiar, such as the color spectrum. Like with the color spectrum, the autism "spectrum" is represented in various ways (as a line, as a wheel, or even as a cylinder), accounting for different things.

"High" and "Low" Functioning Autism

When most people think of autism as a "spectrum" or how "autistic" a person is, they think of it in terms of one's "functionality", that being the amount of support that one requires from others to live their life. This scale ranges from "high functioning" to "low functioning". "High functioning" autism is understood to be where they need little to no assistance and actually act no different from an average person. In much more cases however, they're perceived as being so above average in terms of intelligence they can probably find Ϫ thousand to the Ϫ in their heads that makes up for whatever social awkwardness they might have. Those that are perceived as being "low functioning", however, are seen as being so braindead that they absolutely must be kept an eye on at all times as they're on their tablet to make sure they don't bash themselves on the head or crap their pants. However, outside of whatever moral implications may come about from generalizing people as being socially awkward savants or bumbling tards for being autistic alone, or whoever these depictions might offend, this type of scale has severe limitations.

The first of these is how people are typically categorized under this scale. Usually, this type of categorization is discrete, rather than continuous. That is, each of these categories, "high" and "low", take on very specific forms that are applied to every single case of someone being "autistic", typically from what's readily apparent about them. By that point, where the fuck do we put the guy that can't walk, speak coherent sentences, needs his diapers changed, and has to eat and drink everything through a straw, but can do complex analysis in his head? They appear "low-functioning" because they need someone to assist him 24/7 in order to function, but it's also clear they're quite skilled in the field of complex analysis, which requires a ton of other math to understand, which also makes them appear "high functioning" to some extent. Therefore, the next logical step might be to try to put him somewhere in-between these two categories, which we now deem as "extremes". This leads us into the second issue with this categorization.

The second issue is that even in its more "continuous" form, where we talk about someone being "very", "not too" or just "sorta" autistic, this still doesn't fully reflect their mindset or what they struggle with specifically. All this does is again make broad assumptions about what autism is, only now we're putting it on a scale between being a "savant" or a "tard", whatever one chooses those terms to mean precisely. This also doesn't account for the fact that all people can be gifted in some areas but also fall short in others, regardless of if they're autistic or not, similar to our boi who knows complex analysis. This is especially true in autistic people, where their strengths or challenges can be more pronounced. As one might guess from this, this particular scaling doesn't fully acknowledge the needs and challenges of individual people, and instead defines them by vague terms. This makes it very easy to make generalizations about them while filling in the gaps about their character.

Going back to our color spectrum analogy, I see ranking people by how "high" or "low" functioning they are as just reducing the color spectrum to the primary colors. There's sort of a fundamental idea there of things having color, but it's restricted to just those three categories (red, yellow, and blue), which we know not everything is strictly those colors. You could then mix those colors to get the secondary colors (orange, green, and purple), or mix those colors yet again to get tertiary colors, and continue from there, but that's still not fully reflective of all of the possible colors things can be. By that point, you still also have to account for things like how much of each you mix or other factors like the colors hue, saturation and value. You can also say that some color, say for example burgundy, is "sorta" red or "sorta" purple, but that still doesn't fully explain what "burgundy" is or what colors or how much of each you need to make it.

For these reason, I usually try to avoid calling people "high" or "low" functioning or saying someone is "very" or "sort of" autistic on this wiki in particular, whose point is to portray people as accurately, albeit also as entreatingly, as possible. That doesn't mean I won't occasionally call someone "autistic" for shits and giggles, though. People usually know what one is talking about in that context.

Visibility

Part of what makes autism a spectrum is the wide range of possibilities in how "noticeable" it is that someone is autistic. More often than not, this is what people usually refer to when they say someone is "high" or "low" functioning. The scaling is based on what symptoms are most noticeable.

In order to avoid stigmatization, some autists might do what is referred to as "masking". Much like how Chris might put a blue towel over his head to become JenkinsJinkies, autistic people that "mask" try to not appear "autistic". That is, they suppress whatever traits make them appear autistic, whether consciously or unconsciously, in order to blend in more with and be accepted by society. Autistic people can mask in formal situations, such as when they're in school or at work, or when they're with friends.

Core Characteristics

As discussed, since autism is a spectrum, there isn't one way someone can be autistic.

Common Misconceptions

When autism is discussed, it is common for those talking about the subject to bring up common misconceptions about the condition, usually to talk about the resulting stigmatization that comes with it. While the discussion of this stigmatization is important, for the purposes of the CWCki, I also want to discuss how these same misconceptions affect the perception of Christory.

Autism as a Disease

Autism is typically understood by people as a "disease" or "illness" that prevents people from living their lives or hinders their independence. The main issue with this mindset is that it leads to a thrall of other misconceptions surrounding specific autistic people, particularly those with co-occurring conditions such as trauma or other mental and physical conditions they exhibit; such as cerebral palsy, ADHD, or even anything like gastrointestinal issues. Because of autism being deemed as some sort of super disease that causes people to do weird shit, which often times they do, it's very easy to attribute a lot of those behaviors specifically to the autism. As a result, it creates a fairly inaccurate image of their entire character or, in our case, what role they've had with Chris.

As a result of this mindset, it is easy for people to try and rationalize a sort of "cause" behind it, or ways to try and "cure" it.

Women and Autism

Yes, despite what anyone might have told you, women can also be autistic. Like with everything else about autism, there also isn't one specific way a girl or woman can be autistic.