Why is autism synonymous with mental retardation?

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"ret*d" is supposedly an outdated term as an actualy dignosis but it's used as an insult to autistic people. People who support Peta are sometimes called Petatards and I've seen "Avatard" being used for someone who likes the movie Avatar (the blue cat people version). Rather than being offended, I just think it's silly how people can't think of a clever insult. Surely they could come up with something better than ret*d. But anyway sometimes on You Tube, I comment on how my bearded dragon is such a wonderful service animals and someone will leave a comment such as "All ret*ds should have service animals". or something stupid like that. I know that is just an example of attempted bullying but if I had said she had a diffrent role as a service animal such as a seeing eye lizard, and if the original video wasn't about autism, they would have said something else. I was suspected to be mildly ret*d as a child but the phycologists used better wording but still basicaly said I was ret*d and would be in a group home or instution by now. But anyway, Why do people use "ret*d" as an insult to autistic people? I know NTs are called ret*d sometimes but it seems that autistic people are called that the most.

No one ever said I was a ret*d. They said I was a Space Cadet.

"ret*d" is used to refer to someone with very little intellectual capacity. Autistics are often perceived (not always correctly) to have very little intellectual capacity.

Because apparently, you have to be stupid to stim, or something like that.

Also, because a speech delay is generally thought (for no particular reason that I'm aware of) to indicate that you're stupid.

And maybe they think only smart people make eye contact.

I not only got tested for asperger's today I also got tested and found out I have an above average intelligence, I am extremely smart as well as gifted in certain areas.

But here's the thing that makes people think i am slow. I failed at reading comprehension and also listening comprehension. I have a hard time following verbal AND written instruction.

that alone makes people think i am slow. but the listening comprehension for me is due to a hearing impairment mainly, my brain does not process what I hear, cause I hear things wrong all the time cause I can't hear.

people have treated me as if I was ret*d all my life, I am so excited to find out I am not. I am also reading at above levels that teachers read.. however I have a hard time remembering what I read, so I fail tests, which is why people thought I was slow in school. so if i decide to go back to college, I am going to make a point to read things 2-3 times and not depend on just reading through things.

I was not called ret*d often...most of the time, I was called, "the chic from mars"
Sometimes called al slut or something like that because I had a high sex drive in high school and not much sense about people.
Since then, that has long passed and now I am celebate, but people dont call me much of anything anymore...I am rather elusive.

Auties, Aspies and Savants may be incorectly labeled as "ret*d", This may be for a number of reasons. Including but not limited to, things such as social awkwardness, delayed speech, emotional awkwardness, and much more. The scientific definition of Mental Retardation is "Having an IQ below 45" (Last time I checked). An example of an incorect labeling of "Retardation" Is Kim Peek, I heard about him. Apparently he has an amazing memory but was labeled as "ret*d" until he was 18.

People think this because the medical ccommunity has told them it is true. Doctors have told anyone who would listen that "75% of all autistic people are mentally ret*d". After my duaghter's diagnosis the doctor who assessed her told me this (she scores well below the 70 cutoff) probably to reassure me that she wasn't alone. I bougt books and that 75% figure was in almost all of them. It shows up jn magazine articles. The idea that autistic people can do very badly on an IQ test yet be quite intelligent has caught on with parents of autistic children for obvious reasons but the medical community does not agree and is sticking to their "most are ret*d" line.


Most of the posters here may have scored well on IQ tests, but a lot of autistic people have not. Perhaps this will change if autism-friendly IQ tests like Raven's Matrices are adopted. But now, ask a doctor and you will be told "75% are ret*d". Journalists ask doctors ( or Google) and so magazine articles keep reinforcing this.

It's 70, actually, plus you have to have difficulties in daily life; you can't just be bad at IQ tests.

Twenty years ago, 75% of diagnosed autistics were mentally ret*d. But twenty years ago, they diagnosed only 1:1000 people with autism. That's only 1 in 10 autistics with a correct diagnosis. Today, a great deal more people are diagnosed with milder forms, and a lot more people who would have been diagnosed with simple MR are now also diagnosed autistic. However, there is still a great deal of overlap between autism and MR. About a quarter of all Down syndrome individuals are also autistic. Fragile X is also associated with both autism and MR. So you do find them together a lot.

It used to be that you couldn't be diagnosed with autism unless you had no more than mild mental retardation; now even people in the profound category are getting comorbid autism diagnoses. We're "stealing" a lot of cases from the MR/developmental delay box.

So, yeah, autism and mental retardation are closely associated; but the percentage is probably a great deal lower than 75% because the group of new diagnoses in the mild-autism category is larger than the group that switched from MR.

Autism is also closely associated with ADHD, learning disabilities, and other neurological atypicalities.

I think what we know, most of all, is that you have an atypical brain of some kind, your chances of also being autistic are greatly increased. Being mentally ret*d is only one of many ways to be atypical.

The aggravating thing is that this 75% mental retardation figure has not been updated. I was told it at my daughter's diagnosis. It was in the books I bought. It's in the magazine articles written about autism. Womdering about the authenticity of that figure was how I found WP a year ago. (Googling "autism and IQ tests" at the time led straight to WP because IQ gets discussed so much here.) It's also frustrating that the medical community considers the Raven's Matrices test to be exotic and uneccessary and they stick to WAIS (or whatever the acronym is) and blithely stamp "mental retardation" on countless medical forms. It's also frustrating that many people here think that "ret*d" has been retired by the medical community and that "intellectual disability" has been adopted instead. It hasn't been retired. Today even as we type it is being written onto the medical records of people recently assessed.

I must say that I am delighted that my daughter's tiny special needs school took the IQ test results and put them in a filing cabinet, never to be referred to again, when I gave them to administration as part of getting her in. Unlike the medical community, the best/most appropriate schools use IQ scores only for record keeping and not as an actual guide to how or what they should be teaching. So one place where I'm not frustrated is with my dauighter's schooling. In that, I think I'm very lucky among parents in general.

The word comes to us English speakers by way of French-speaking William the Conqueror, who got it from Latin. It literally just means "slow". Like in music one sees the Italian word "ritartando", which is a queue for the musicians to slow the pace of the music.

A more accurate word is "mentally ret*d", meaning "mentally slow", to distinguish from other forms of retardation, such as ret*d physical growth. Although there might be an official medical definition for this word, in the common speech if you take that literal definition then it could apply to a downs syndrome person or any NT with a slow mind. And it can apply to autistics with an overall slow mind, even if they might be a genius in one specific area.

A story of someone who is doing well and doesn't have many challenges in life is boring. So the media tells stories of people with the largest challenges. Thus the typical story of an autistic is like Rainman, the most extremely challenged type of autistic. My only personal experience with autism was a musical genius that my dad helped for a while. In many ways his mind was on the level of a 10 year old. Despite his musical genius, his mental handicaps in everything outside of music were so strong that he was unable to function independently and ultimately needed to live in the care of a home for the mentally ret*d run by specially trained professionals. This is an extreme example, but it was the only example I ever knew of until recently so I assumed that and Rainman were all there was to know about autism. Hence why I thought of it as a form of mental retardation. Now I know better since I've done more research.

I also think part of this is that in the English speaking world we didn't have Dr. Asperger's research until recently, and so until recent decades the only people recognized as autistic were the most severe cases. In my case above, that was in the 1980s. Asperger's syndrome didn't officially exist then, so officially all the aspies of the world grouped together with the NTs.

Back in the day when the term "autism" didn't even exist, autistics were just labeled as mental ret*d.

What the hell does that mean and how is it an insult? Sounds quite cool to me. I want to be a Space Cadet.

Anyways, people think autism = mental retardation because they're ignorant.

I am thankful for the region where I live. Most people do not view autism as a type of "retardation" here. They view autism as a condition that harbors intelligence and talents with deficits in social skills. And that is not "retardation" in the minds of those where I live.

But I realize this is not the case everywhere. That is why people must be educated on autism. I promote the view that autism is a difference and not a disability. However, I do realize that in the case of many with "classic" autism---there does need to be a lot of help and support needed for them.

I've heard of him before. I saw him on an episode of Medical Incredible, and apparently, he has a complex way of thinking. He can not only remember books and music, but he can actually recall the composers of the songs, and play the songs back!

Yeah, they actually based Rain Man on him.

they use the term and seem to lump anyone that isnt their standard definition on normal-I hate that word with a passion-there was recently an episode of Parenthood where the guy in the line at the supermarket called Max-the child with Aspergers -that wretched R word and the father punched him-I know its television and a TV show but hearing that word still hurts a bit.