Is Aspergers trendy?

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I'm going to chalk up to some of the "trendiness" to the New Car syndrome. What I mean by this is, ever bought yourself a car. Like for example a Caprise. At first you never see anyone ride a Caprise in your Saturn, then you get a Caprise and you see Caprise after Caprise after Caprise on the road. It seems trendy because people become aware of something when they have experience with something. I hope to god that makes sense.

Interesting, have you noticed any trends in scientific disciplines people with autistic traits are attracted to?

Also would you say being from a wealthy background can make being on the spectrum easier to accomplish goals? I imagine most scientists came from fairly good backgrounds. I know that Donald Triplett did better than others diagnosed, but his family were quite wealthy.

As for trendy, I see people say it but I don't believe it. There might be some people who want any excuse to think they are "special" but I never met anyone who wanted to be bad a communicating with other people and never really be a part of any community.

I am absolutely certain none of them would trade places with me. They don't want this. Whatever the trendy things is it isn't having aspergers.

I think we need people to "come out" in a way, to change the stereotype of mental health problems of all sorts.

I'm not sure, since there is big mix in each field, but my guesstimate is more in physics, chemistry, and engineering. Also, the prevalence is not the same at each institution. Different places select and attract different people.

There was a study showing that college students with ASD had highest prevalence of STEM majors (~34%), greater than general population (~23%) and other disability groups. There was big gender gap, such that 39% of male ASD had STEM major vs. 3% of female ASD, while the difference in general population is 29% male, 15% female. The college enrollment rate was 43% for ASD, which had third lowest rate amongst disability groups (learning disability, speech/language impairment, hearing impairment, visual impairment, orthopedic impairment, other health impairment, traumatic brain injury, intellectual disability, multiple disability), and higher than ID and MD. The highest rates were in hearing, vision impairment, 64%. Enrollment was correlated with family income for ASD. This study included only ASD students who had received special education services for ASD in high school.

On the question of accomplishing goals, the correlation of college enrollment with family income is not surprising, but the reasons are probably very complicated in the money factors (<$25000, 25000-50000, 50000-75000 in the study, so we're not talking all that rich) and the cognition/behavior of the parents and interplay of these with school and society, and the child's own traits. Amongst the people I know, most come from middle class backgrounds, not rich.

As for "difference verses disability," as far as I'm concerned, autism is an impairment. If you are not impaired, you do not have autism. Period.

^
There are also those studies showing that more kids of engineers have ASD kids than kids of parents in other professions and I've seen a profusion of studies showing higher rates of ASD rates and slightly higher rates of the disorder among Mathematicians, scientists and engineers. A lot of Ted Talks about autism discuss them. Having ASD traits isn't the same as having ASD though.

If you're at me laughing right now, thats what's bothering me.

Everything? Not really.

So is someone who lost their legs, but then got prosthetic ones, still disabled?

I feel like if you lose your legs you can do something physical to un-do that, but Autism is a whole different ball-game. If you have so much going on in your head every time you try to make a decision, like which washing powder to use, and you need to make hundreds of those decisions every day then you're brain function will be harmed. Going to the supermarket, for example, is an essential part of life and can FEEL impossible- you have to consciously think about all of these things at the same time-

*walking and appearing "normal".
*Controlling stims under bright lights and stress
*pushing the trolley around corners without twisting too much and pulling a back muscle! i cannot work out how people do this so easily!
*remembering and organising a list in your head or remembering to refer to your list (even making the list may have taken an hour, and it still might be missing the only 2 essential things you need)
*looking out for people smiling/interacting with you and working out if you know them (you dont want to seem rude by not recognising them) and reacting appropriately either way.
*Finding the product you are looking for in the aisle
*working out where other people would have categorised the product you need- the arrangement may seem illogical to you and you will spend hours looking in the DIY section when you should be in the pet section. When you realise what you did, you will always think "argh how did I get that wrong?" and feel annoyed at yourself on top of it all.
*when choosing a product you have to think of everything you know about each option while you whittle your options down. (I look for deals first, but then check if there are others that are cheaper by the kilo (and im pretty slow at mental arithmetic) then I check the ingredients. If im allergic to it then I start the whole process again. If I'm not, I will then doubt whether I need the product, sometimes deciding I dont when I do. I sometimes find myself just zoning-out, staring at a product in my hand for too long).

The checkout- the worst bit. If I am so exhausted that if I cant get into a focused "quick-mode" then I feel the whole queue's eyes on me, analysing how fast I'm going. The cashier will probably be asking lots of questions too, and then I need to decide how to pay and not forget my handbag/card when I leave.

I seem to do it all with a smile on my face and just a few stims. But I will suffer the consequences when I get home and have to put it all away when I just want to sit with a heavy blanket wrapped around my legs (extremely fatigued and needing the sensory stuff I guess). After all that, and £100 spent, my boyfriend will notice the ingredients are next-to-useless because we cant make more than one meal from the lot... and neither of us can be bothered to cook anyway... so we get a takeaway.

I'm not sure how I can ever do all of what a person is expected to do without negative consequences, or be un-disabled, or absolved from having to do each step, no matter how hard I try. How do you stop your brain from thinking too much? As I get older there is more information in there to process, and my body is more tired.

There is no accommodation, other than physical human assistance, that could make it easy. I dont like internet shopping because I dont like people coming to the house. I might give it a go again soon though.

I agree. I find the "autism is a difference people, not a disability" particularly annoying. But these days whenever I see an article about ASD the comments are full of people telling me what a wonderful career, life, and spouse they have and that ASD is a difference. Unfortunately, the public read these comments don't think we don't need help. If your life is so wonderful you probably don't have ASD. I'm tired of hearing people say ASD is a gift. It's not a gift, It's a disability.

Yeah, I think WP is a skewed sample of people with ASD (skewed toward the milder or borderline end). *This does not mean that there aren't more severe cases here (I know there are) just that, I think, on average, ASDers here tend to be less impaired than ASDers in the general population.

I also agree that autism is a disorder and a disability rather than only a difference.

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And to be honest, while it is more difficult to do everyday things, you can still do them, though with some difficulty. I understand where you're coming from in that it's really difficult when your mind starts overanalyzing and you start to feel overwhelmed. And what I do, though it may not work for some people, is imagine songs that I enjoy. Soon, I start to hear them and I start to forget about worries.