"This person has autism" cards. What do you think?

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I keep meaning to get one of those put together or such. I want it for shutdowns, especially when I lose speech.

Why would somebody want to use one of these lol. WTF.

What on earth were you doing in order to be sent to a hospital ward? And how would the card have helped?

I have one that has (it's a little key chain type deal):

Person with autism, may not respond to verbal commands.

I can see some situations that aren't all that uncommon where I'd need it.

Such as?

I think they are a good idea, I would not mind having one, but as others have said, using them may depend on the situation.

Simple.

Questioned by police. Questioned by anyone in authority.

If I can't respond verbally to them and my carer isn't around, they'll think much different things than if they know I have a communication disorder.

I can see how having a card might be handy for those types of things but I've been told by all the experts that I communicate too well verbally to have anything on the autism spectrum. I'm capable of standing up & talking for myself thou it's harder when I'm ticked off or nervous but I can manage when I have a chance; I don't think I would get that chance if I use the card because they would assume I'm retorted or something & they would treat me like I'm slow as a result. People in my area are really ignorant & closed minded; even the so-called autism experts won't diagnose autism if the person isn't sever enough to need a caretaker & can handle being by themselves for a while. I will NOT be treated like a typical thinking, rational reasonable adult who's capable of making his own decisions if I use the autism card here. It's aLOT better if I tell people I'm dyslexic & borderline legally blind(I have official diagnoses of both) instead of telling them AS or autism

You have a carer? What for?

Like many coping techniques, having it can make it less likely to need it. At a company function once, I had a bad time, and had to go off alone. Unfortunately, someone getting ice saw me and kept escalating the issue with more senior people trying to come back and help. Had I had something to help me communicate my need, they probably would have left me to it. Had I had the card available in my pocket, I might have been able to verbalize my issues.

Telling the Colonel to just go away is not really a career enhancing maneuver!

Just because you don't have any reason to use one of these, doesn't mean that everyone doesn't.

One example:

Someone I know was looking for us while we were moving into a new apartment. He knew what street we were on, but not the particular house. Unfortunately for him, none of us knew it but the police were doing a drug bust on a house on that street that day. He looked suspicious, walking down the street, looking at each house, and they thought he had something to do with the drug house for some reason. So he was chased down by plain clothes cops (after they said stop, and he thought he was being mugged because he didn't know they were police), tackled, and handcuffed. He then was questioned, before we eventually showed up, saw him, and between him and us we were able to explain what happened.


If that happened to me, there's no way I wouldn't have entered a shutdown. I'd have lost all ability to speak, and had drastically reduced functionality in pretty much every other way. They'd have been questioning me and I wouldn't have been able to respond. I would have been brought to the station, unless I had a way to communicate what was going on.


However, more generally than an obscure situation that won't necessarily come up.

I react very strongly to sensory input, yet am not visibly disabled. Many of my stims aren't even stereotypical autistic ones. People don't always take me seriously and I can't always explain to them what's going on to me. There are very normal things (e.g. headlights on a car) that I find incredibly overwhelming and I lose the ability to process much when exposed to these.

If I need to answer questions, I'd need to tell them that I can't do everything they expect of a normal person, and not have this either big a big "this person is lying, see, they're not looking in my eyes" or "this person isn't speaking, they must be trying to hide things from me".

Talk for me; overwhelmed [due to a zillion reasons] when out and about around people can make me mute
Help me move from place to place if I become "stuck" in place due to the aforementioned overwhelmed
"Stuck" in place due to inability to change from preplanned events/choices; I need a rescue here
{Insert a heap of other things here}

Simple ASD stuff there.

I thought the cards were a stupid idea. Apparently a lot of people are up for it.

Fantastic.


I can't relate. Obviously. Probably.

Note that we're not saying these should be required just that we personally have use for them.

If you don't have use, then don't use one. But don't say that we shouldn't if we do have use.

That was a complicated situation. To start, it was my mistake to not tell the school psych that I had aspergers syndrome. She thought I had just a bad case of depression and anxiety and completely misread me.

From what I learned later, people with aspergers cause were black and white thinkers have a tendancy to call suicide even when there not serious about it. Unfortunately, I had to go over this later w/a autistic specialist who told me about taking things literally. So when I was doing the risk assessment, I was taken seriously. When the emergency staff came to take me away, no one knew I had aspergers. People in those situations are ready to think any type of "weird" behavior means the person is not sane. Therefore giving a person a better reason to send them to the ward. In high pressure situations like that, a persons non-verbals are judged highly to see if the person is sane. If the staff knew I had aspergers, I likely think it would helped. I mean come on, with being aspie + my anxiety levels + horrible situations = appearly insane.

The point of those cards is to keep them in your wallet and show them just in case you get into bad situations. I think some of the people replying to this post thought they were cards to give out to people in general. No...its not. Only if your in a high pressure situation where its needed, it could save you a s**t load of crap.

I think it is a good idea. If people knew I had Asperger's Syndrome, and had a conrete idea of what AS was, I feel maybe they would start to understand us better.

Along with your license of course, I think any Aspie driver should carry this card with them. Aspies can learn to drive and usually will follow traffic rules to the letter, but its good to know that someone has asperger's