When people say Asperger's is a 'mental health' problem...

Post Reply New Topic

You are welcome Misswoofalot.

To wavefreak58---I am having serious allergy problems today (off from work) so it is hard for me to concentrate on debate here. But just a couple things you wrote (and I didn't read it all). As for the hats---they would make cone shaped hats for the coneheads---therefore different kind of hat---but not a disordered one. As for adapting---I don't adapt. I don't need to adapt. I have always done my own thing and if people like it fine, if not...it's there problem. And because of this, my family and I have a happy existence because we accept each other's differences. But there are challenges like with anyone. As for scientific advances---I got that from one of the leading experts on autism---Temple Grandin. I think her reasoning is valid. I don't think the world is as NT as you think. An NT is one without any of the so-called differences. And very few people are without issues of some kind such as bi-polar, etc. The big thing right now in education is diversity---and as an educator I see overwhelming acceptance for differences in the school I teach in (public high school of all socio-economic classes).

By the way, nice artwork on your webpage.

We get so absorbed into special intense interests that we can become experts. Most NTs never absorb as deeply into interests as we do. I stand behind Temple Grandin on this one. And this is just opinion. But I am strongly opionated on my beliefs here.

The whole idea of something being a mental health problem vs. not a mental health problem is kind of nonsense anyway.

Basically, a psychiatric problem is something that is dealt with by psychiatry. That's all it means. It's not a measure of what kind of condition something is, it has nothing to do with that. All it has to do with is what group of assorted historically-accidental people "treat" the condition. That's all. Nothing more. Arguing about it is kind of meaningless.

Well if I did not have aspergers I probably would not have such difficulties with functioning socially, it is pretty much nessisary to be able to do that so something that interferes with that would be a psychological problem in my opinion.

But does any1 else here experience a sense of isolation that feels like a DIRECT result of autism? In other words, what about the emotional effects of being so cut off from one's surroundings? - It doesn't surprise me that anxiety and depression are so common among us even (often, I suspect) in the absence of any constant bullying. I don't mean to depress anyone, but I do wonder how others - particularly those with a Myers-Briggs 'F'-type underlying personality - find fulfilment in a world which lacks any of the concrete links to them that NT brains create automatically (see the above-referenced article at http://www.paulcooijmans.com/asperger/a ... rized.html).

A sentient life is made up of thinking, feeling, and most of all, doing - I wonder how a severely asperger's or low-functioning autist 'do' anything complex (i.e. involving of all major brain regions/processes) given the mental/brain-activity fragmentation that has been shown to be characteristic of autism.

I am slightly confused by the references to thinking/cognition in this thread - I can't point to any major, obvious deviance (from the norm) in the nature of my CONSCIOUS thought processes, and suspect that we're talking about unconscious habits of mental processing such as remembeing what a facial expression means based on what someone else has shown/told us, as opposed to just knowing it-??

Autism is a mental health difference. It varies from what would be considered the average healthy human being. Whether you perceive it as a problem or not is completely subjective.

It is a problem/disability for any autist who by virtue of their underlying personality/temperament, feels a need for an emotionally-experienced connection with the outside world AS A WHOLE. Solutions might take as many forms as there are likeminded autists (see 'Myers-Briggs NFP types')