High functioning or low functioning

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Mirror21
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25 Jan 2013, 1:54 pm

Callista wrote:

kamiyu910 wrote:

I keep having trouble with this whole high functioning or low functioning terminology. I can't tell who is what, everyone seems pretty equal to me. I have no idea what I would be considered (especially since I'm waiting to get an actual diagnosis). How can anyone tell what someone is, online or in person?

You can't. The terms have very little meaning. I've been called both.

For the most part, "high-functioning" means that the person using it has a subjective idea that you are better off than some other people with your disability, in some way, perhaps independence, skills, intelligence, or just plain looking less autistic.

I hate those terms, honestly. It seems like whenever they're trotted out, it's to deny you something. If you're "high-functioning", you obviously don't need help; if you're "low-functioning", you can't do this or that and therefore get denied a lot of opportunities. I resist quite strongly whenever someone tries to push me into a box like that.

I completely agree with you. Besides following the HFA and LFA terminology we all have high and low areas.

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25 Jan 2013, 6:41 pm

chlov wrote:

There are surely people with actual LFA on the web, but most of them can't. I talk from my own personal experience, I don't know what other people's experience is like.
However, it's rare to find someone with LFA on the web. The 99% of the people on the web that claim to have autism are AS/HFA.

Most of them can't talk but if you teach them to type or use some other form of communication they can often do so.

Personal experience is also known as anecdotal evidence and is thus not particularly definitive over statistically significant samples. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find any comprehensive studies about "low functioning autistic" people learning to communicate, and each person who does learn to communicate in some way is treated as a unique and exotic creature more than a human being, and also treated as an exception rather than part of an emerging pattern that people described as "LFA" are showing that they can think, can communicate, and do have something to say. The problematic assumption has always been that they don't do or have these things. Fortunately, that has changed to some extent.

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25 Jan 2013, 6:43 pm

Callista wrote:

Recently, my therapist used "low functioning" more generally to encompass people with a wide variety of diagnoses to contrast to my abilities. The interesting thing to me was that she described them as capable of things that I am not myself capable of under most conditions.

I don't really care for the label, as "high-functioning" is often applied to me and then treated as a generalization of things I should be able to do, despite the fact that I cannot do them.

cyberdad
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25 Jan 2013, 6:49 pm

kamiyu910 wrote:

If you don't mind me asking, why do you need to know if somebody online is LFA?

kamiyu910
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25 Jan 2013, 6:51 pm

cyberdad wrote:

If you don't mind me asking, why do you need to know if somebody online is LFA?

I don't really care, it's just something I keep seeing other people talking about and it didn't make sense to me. I guess it felt like I was missing something that was obvious to everyone else and wanted clarity.

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Matt62
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25 Jan 2013, 7:32 pm

Probably both terms should be tossed in the circular file. Since many people over their lifespans on the Spectrum will move up or down, depending on many different variables. And the Mental Retardation thing is largely mythical. Oh some have it, there are a couple of co-morbid disorders that present with Autism.

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25 Jan 2013, 8:11 pm

kamiyu910 wrote:

cyberdad wrote:

If you don't mind me asking, why do you need to know if somebody online is LFA?

Now imagine if an NT wanted to know if the people they were speaking to on a forum were disabled in some way. It would come across like they want to treat people differently online. However I do understand that may not have been your intention.

kamiyu910
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27 Jan 2013, 12:08 am

cyberdad wrote:

kamiyu910 wrote:

cyberdad wrote:

If you don't mind me asking, why do you need to know if somebody online is LFA?

I certainly can't treat people differently, they all seem basically the same to me (if that makes sense). I am really bad at communicating properly. I know what I want to say but I can't figure out how to say it... Like with this, it's purely for curiosity since I couldn't figure it out myself. Turns out it's because there really isn't anything to get, I guess.

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Callista
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27 Jan 2013, 12:53 am

Yup, pretty much. But people still persist in using those terms.

Anyway, you're asking for clarification and that's a good thing. It means you know enough to realize that there is something that needs to be clarified. You've no idea how often I've talked to people--doctors, even!--who use terms like "high-functioning", while assuming everybody knows what they mean by it, even though everybody seems to mean something different. Rather you ask for clarification than make assumptions and just end up confused.

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chris5000
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27 Jan 2013, 1:00 am

according to the dsm is the amount of support you require

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27 Jan 2013, 1:13 am

chris5000 wrote:

according to the dsm is the amount of support you require

I can't recall anything like that... Are you thinking of GAF? This is a 1-100 scale describing how well you are coping in your current situation--but this score can vary widely within one's lifetime; many people see a range of 20 to 80, so it is not a permanent label you can put on a person, but a description of their current ability to cope.

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