Do you think the man in the film is mild, mod or severe?

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So the fact that this young man would likely die without support means nothing? How is that high functioning? I don't get it. He has no concept of safety, cannot walk on the street or ride a bike without serious risk of getting hit by a car. His kitchen could have caught fire while he spun on his chair if his mother hadn't intervened.

Left completely to myself, I would survive. Perhaps by eating out of a dumpster and sleeping in a cardboard box. But I would live.

Let's be real, here (it is the aspie thing, right?). Functional labels are arbitrary and provide little insight into an individual's challenges. This young man's disabilities are heavily compensated for by the intervention of dedicated parents. It's fantastic that he has this level of support. But applying a functioning level to him is pointless. Remove his support network and he will crash and burn. Maybe literally.

I am being realistic. Since he is disabled he needs help with some things, however, there are many things he is capable of doing. Due to his disability, he does need assistance in some areas. Since Autism is a spectrum, he might require a different type than you or I. I might require a different type than you or he.

I think it's misleading to label him low functioning. There's plenty he can do, but, yes he is still disabled and needs help with some things.

I can think of the following 3 things at the moment.

One could say he's functioning "high" for functioning this "high" despite having an impairment.

He's not functioning "high" if "high-functioning" would be used to mean being able to do all things considered normal.

He also probably wouldn't be called "high-functioning" if it is used to mean a person is functioning "high" despite having a difficulty that others don't have to deal with and/but that doesn't necessarily impair them all the time.

Well, there are people with a diagnosis of Asperger Syndrome who also have no awearness of danger, & they are clearly considered high functioning. Don't forget that high functioning doesn't nessaserally mean mild.

Maybe I am falling victim to absolute thinking. It seems to me that we cannot asses a person's functioning on any objective level because the measurement cannot be taken without interference from factors that change the person's day to day ability to function. To measure accurately a person's ability to function, we would have to eliminate all things that externally augment the person's abilities. We could then determine what this individual could do without intervention and this would be their baseline functional level. This would be highly unethical, of course. We cannot remove all of a person's supports simply to have an accurate measurement. Subsequently, what happens in practice is far less rigid. A person such as the man in this video operates at a higher level than otherwise possible precisely because of the interventions. Is his baseline high? Or are the augmentations to his baseline pushing him further up the scale? Is the severity of his autism less because his functional capacity has been increased through interventions and training? Assigning high and low functional levels is just not very informative in my opinion. It doesn't tell me where a person started, how they got to where they are and how far they can go. It doesn't do anything other than give social service agencies and arbitrary line in the sand that allows them to provide or deny services.

It's a degree of disability. Ask yourself if Asperger's or Autism always means disability or are there varying degrees with some not being disabled at all?

In terms of disability, he appears more high functioning than low.

He appears to me to be quite disabled if the measure of that is his ability to function without significant support. I completed a triathlon. But without his father and brother at his side directing him he would not have made it through. I suspect that his training regimen is heavily directed by his family and that while his fitness level is remarkable, he would not have attained that without his support network. He can use an ATM, but only if someone assists him in actually getting to one. He can cook, but will leave the stove on.

I am high functioning. He is DEFINITELY considerably more disabled than me. If he is high functioning what does that make me? Not autistic?

I am curious what you consider low functioning.

Do you consider youself disabled, Wavefreak, is the question. If you don't, maybe it's possible to have Autism without disability. This type of thing always confuses me, especially with Autism because of the spectrum nature.
Can Autism and disability be two seperate things?

Well they aren't real aspies then. Doctors just like to place autism labels on patients with autism but don't use Asperger's correctly. In fact I hear lot of aspies don't really have it and most of them are actually autistic.

How do you measure disability?

I am employed. But I have a 99th percentile IQ (yeah - I know IQ's are dubious) and I do what is effectively entry level database work after 20 years in the field. Am I a burden to the system? No. Am I anywhere close to meeting my potential? No. Would society as a whole see a return on its investment if I had appropriate services and interventions that allowed me to work at the level of my intrinsic abilities? I think so. Will this happen? Not likely, I'm too "high functioning" so I'm on my own. So I am miserable because I get so bored at work I want to gouge out my eyes (no joke - it takes will power not to self harm), the world gains nothing but a database drone, and I get labeled as "not disabled".

What does this have to do with the young man in this video? His interventions and support have allowed him to EXCEED what could be expected left to his own devices. And I am REALLY HAPPY for him. It is fantastic that he has these people around him. But if I want to exceed my potential, I have to pay a life coach $90/hour, spend years motivating myself to go through therapy and fight my way through life. All by my self. Something is wrong with that picture. Functional levels are an arbitrary measure that reflect almost none of the complexity of real life. It is a reductionist attempt to partition reality into neat little categories that can be easily understood. And, IMHO, it fails to offer much of value - to people like this young man, people like me, or anyone else on the spectrum.

Well, if you can work and live on your own, then, by definition, you aren't disabled. But, a declaration of disability should not be required to allow everyone to work at their full potential. This goes for everyone irregardless of neurological status.

All this means is that "disability" is yet another culturally bound definition subject to the whims of whatever prevailing philosophical ideas are holding sway. There is no objective measure of disability equivalent to such things as mass an velocity.

Why do we provide services to the severely impaired (let's not use the word disabled)? Why not just let them die? (rhetorical hyperbole - I am not actually suggesting this). It is because society has made a moral judgment that there is value in investing in these individuals. What is that value? When does the energy invested no longer provide sufficient value? How does this relate to arbitrary definitions of functioning and disability? I am impaired - significantly impaired in some things. Why is my impairment any less debilitating than another's? Who get's do draw the line between impaired and disabled? What criteria are used? How is it established that these criteria are fair?

Not true. You can still be disabled, able to live on your own, and able to work.

There could be so many different degrees of HFA. One person (Asperger) may even be able to live a normal life with no diagnosis. Another might need much more support. Come on; he may be no where near as high functioning as yourself, but I'm sure he's nowhere near as low functioning as someone who can't communicate at all & don't have any self help skills. I personally think there should be a MFA as well as a HFA & LFA.

MFA is certainly more descriptive than a binary high/low categorization. But even this does not fully reflect impairment. Disregarding the veracity of IQ for the sake of argument, a person with an IQ of 70 that cannot care for themselves is not as severely impaired as a person with an IQ of 140 that cannot care for themselves. Admittedly there are problems with looking at it this way, but it is illustrative. A person with 140 IQ would have different expectations placed upon them and their impairment would prevent those expectations from being met. Which is the greater tragedy, the person that meets the expectations of someone with an IQ of 70 or the person that comes nowhere near meeting the expectations of someone with an IQ of 140?

What about deaf people or blind people or people in wheelchairs? Some of them live alone. Are they not disabled? Some of them even have jobs. I have even seen people in wheelchairs drive cars too. I don't know how they do it. I am sure some of them don't see themselves as disabled either.

My husband is considered disabled but he doesn't see himself as that way.