Reply to 1/20 children in Northern Ireland have autism

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Reply to "1/20 children in Northern Ireland have autism"

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[quote=Anonymous]
My husband and I are research scientists in the biomedical field, and we're personally interested in this. Both DH and DS are on the spectrum, of the inattentive ADHD/high-functioning autism variety.

I think the take-away is that:

1. Neurodivergence is more common than most laypeople imagine. All our brains exist on a spectrum of organizational, cognitive and communication/socialization spectra, and some brains suffer from noticeable variations from the norm, or downright maladaptations, in one or more areas. For mild symptoms, we can also consider how societal expectations can trigger diagnoses that might not have emerged if the patient had had a different, less demanding lifestyle. It happens that our human society is evolving towards social norms that require near-constant contact with ever widening and fluid networks than ever before (social media), which is poses an existential challenge for the less social among us. It's almost a question of natural selection.

2. The medicine of brain functioning ("mental health", which means the physical functioning of the brain) has long been ignored and underfunded, and greatly lags behind other medical fields. It has suffered from moralistic viewpoints centered around sin, guilt, willpower and shame, which hide the true number of patients and hinders their treatment. It's only recently that researchers have made significant strides in creating a framework to define and diagnose the many variations of autism and ADHD, particularly the more high-functioning and less visible variations, which did not use to have such recognition compared to more disruptive variations. This is to be expected: having identified the obvious problems, scientists seek to define the more subtle ones, just like for any scientific issue, medical or otherwise. This diagnostic framework will likely change with time - nothing is set in stone for now. Symptoms can overlap significantly between ADHD, autism, and other disorders, which might indicate that a complete reframing is necessary in the future, with more data at our disposal.

4. Regarding population or familial trauma (war, famine, forced migration or severe neglect leading to lack of physical and mental care): this is an emerging field of research. There are indications that such trauma can be carried into the genes and affect one's offspring, and it has been suggested that such might be the case for slaves and their descendants, or survivors of attempted genocide and their descendants. But nothing is confirmed as yet.[/quote]

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