Reply to Interesting new study about the 4 types of autism

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I find the co-occurrence of mental health issues so interesting because I have family members who fall in different groups and that is indeed a huge difference: some are very affected developmentally but don't have the debilitating mental health issues that are characteristic of the first group. [/quote]

It kind of confuses me because I thought all autistic people had anxiety.[/quote]

Well—the person I’m thinking about does get very anxious when overwhelmed in a situation he doesn’t understand, but doesn’t have the kind of constant “anxiety” that seems disconnected from any obvious event that my family member in the first group has. That person is anxious most of the time, has OCD and depression too. [/quote]

I consider my son to be mildly on the spectrum (though his official DX is adhd and anxiety only) and growing up had two close friends whose brothers were each profoundly disabled by autism and were non verbal. It makes a lot of sense to me that a less developmentally delayed group overall would have more occurrence of anxiety and ocd as we understand them - to me, those are higher brain functions and a way that someone with typical intelligence or a mild intellectual disability would cope with uncertainty around things that are uncomfortable or that they subconsciously know they don’t understand. I think those with more severe intellectual disability (like the people I knew) aren’t mentally capable of the planning and execution aspects of OCD.

Based on my experiences with people all over the spectrum, there is a huge difference between someone with level 1/Asperger’s (or even milder than that) and someone who is severely impaired developmentally by autism - while some of the underlying triggers (like sensory issues) may be the same, the presentation looks like two entirely different diagnoses.  Personally I think the autism spectrum seems too wide - it might be more helpful to have more nuanced diagnoses and interventions.[/quote]

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