"No Autistic People Fifty Years Ago" What?

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That's just code for "All these autistic kids are just undisciplined brats and the diagnoses are just excuses for bad behavior."

It's a prejudice that unfortunately has not yet been stamped out.

Or it's code for they were just all warehoused in horrific institutions and forgotten about and left to rot

So what? It's still relevant.

I don't understand why people get upset about reviving old threads. If the subject is something that a member wants to talk about what's the harm?

Its not that they didn't have autistic people back in the day its just that autistic people weren't diagnosed like they were now. Basically it all comes down to awareness and back then they didn't have any when it came to varying neurotypes. Back then there was either you were with moderate to severe down syndrome(which my mom told me back in the day they used to call "mongloid idiots") or you were normal and able to function.

I would say it was the opposite. There were plenty of us with some degree of autism and things like dyspraxia and NVLD that went undiagnosed because the knowledge base was abysmal.

The latest estimate by the CDC is, I think, that 1 in 59 children (1 in 37 boys, 1 in 151 girls) have an ASD. There seems to be little reason to think this prevalence has actually changed over the years (of course the recognition of what qualifies for an autistic, or ASD, diagnosis has changed dramatically). So the reasonable inference is that 1 in 59 adults, in any age range, has ASD, according to the current definition of ASD. That means a huge number of adults who were never even considered for such a condition when they were growing up. It is regrettable that for most of them, it is unrealistic to imagine, for logistical and financial reasons, that they will ever have a chance to receive a formal diagnosis.

And I agree with skibum, that reviving an old thread seems unobjectionable. Sometimes it seems that a person cannot win; if they revive an old thread they are accused of necromancing, and if they start a new one they are accused of having ignored the already existing thread(s) on the subject. Tolerance and accommodation, I think, are great virtues.

^^^^
This


It is not code but one reason they did not see any autistic people.
They might have very well seen undiagnosed autistics.

It is the old correlation does not imply causation error.
I did not see any autistics, they did not exist, they are a thing now, it must be a fake disease to excuse bad behavior, get underserved benefits, get doctors and drug companies rich. Or it is a real disease caused by vaccines.

Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 01 Jul 2018, 6:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.

In proportion to the population there were probably the same number of autistics (and adhders, and dyspraxics, etc) fifty and a hundred years ago as now.

Many of us on this forum, including myself, are of those who are old enough to be among those people that Strings mentioned above.