Are most people on WP 'Very Mild'?

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I'm doing quite a bit of research on ASD, as I want to understand my own experience, and maybe help others in some way. My ASD has improved a LOT in recent times, but when I was young i was pretty seriously screwed up. ASD spoilt almost every aspect of my life - career, relationships, independence, etc. - and I was barely able to function successfully as an adult. In particular, I can identify with the last but one paragraph on this page, that begins with the words "Says Dr. Minshew,":

http://autism.about.com/od/causesofauti ... mBrain.htm

However, I get the impression that most people on WP are on the very mild end of the spectrum; able to hold down careers, live independently, enjoy successful relationships and even get married! In particular, most people here seem to have a maturity, and awareness of their predicament, that I didn't have when I was much older than they are now. Maybe this is because they've been diagnosed (I wasn't until I was 40), but I suspect this isn't the only reason.

So are most people on WP 'very mild', with just the odd eccentricity, or am I underestimating the amount of suffering out there? I welcome any thoughts about this.

Well, I for one will admit that I am very mild. My last psychological examination, which I had to have to receive financial aid help for my AS as a disability, placed me at a low-to-mid borderline level. The psychologist said he would not have diagnosed me with the disorder from those results, but would verify the disorder based on past history and diagnosis, and those results.

A lot of others on here seem a good bit less mild than I am in this regard.

I also think that parent awareness and attitude plays a major role in how and to what extent symptoms are displayed. My mother was keenly aware that I was showing signs of autism well before I was ever diagnosed, and took to methods of training my deficits rather quickly. For instance, when I still looked at her finger when she would point at things after it was no longer developmentally appropriate, she started having Dad point at things, standing behind him and wiggling her fingers to get my attention, then moving said fingers over to the object he was pointing at. This worked well I hear, although I do not remember much from that long ago in my life.

Last edited by Freak_Contagion on 24 May 2010, 8:20 am, edited 1 time in total.

I think I'm reasonably mild. Although I was diagnosed as a child my father never believed it, so I didn't find out till I was thirtyeight. My main problems aren't to do with autism at all, they're more to do with bipolar. Between episodes of bipolar I tend to find my obsessional interests extremely comforting, and I've been able to hold down a job in the past (although I wouldn't be able to now, but as I say that's not the auty diagnoses.)

I have never really understood this "mild' or' very mild' when referring to AS. That is like saying you are 'mildly' pregnant.

If you qualify for any sort of financial support, I would say you are not 'mild'.

The way that you use terms like "screwed up" to describe ASDs is unfortunate. I'd hazard that most of us at WP don't think of ourselves that way, regardless of what our impairments are. I used to say that I had a "mild" case of AS; indeed, I've done more or less ok without being diagnosed or treated. But these days I'm not sure that there is any such thing as mild autism. How can one have a mild case of alternative brain wiring?

Most of the people on WP have decent verbal and computer skills, obviously. Many of us would probably also measure well on IQ tests. There are also people (like Amanda Baggs, whose youtube channel is amazing) who can interact quite well over the internet but may not even be able to speak in person. For my part, I am quite a clever ape when it comes to counting, sorting, and remembering stuff, but my emotional and social intelligence is at least half a decade behind. I am doing well in life; I have a college degree and an ok job, but I am also living at home with my mother, I use certain substances more often than I'd like, and I am largely clueless and disorganized when it comes to pursuing higher professional goals. Is that mild? It's great that I can talk, do math, learn whatever I want, etc. but I am also struggling with aspects of my life that an equally gifted neurotypical person would breeze through.

Dichotomies like mild vs. severe or low vs. high functioning mostly serve to divide us. Autism is consistently characterized by uneven development across different areas of perception and cognition, so one may be impaired in some areas and gifted in others. Some of us have developed compensatory mechanisms, like the ability to think logically about emotions, or the ability to communicate with typed rather than spoken language. That does not make us less autistic.

removing double post. sorry.

Last edited by cthulukitty on 24 May 2010, 9:18 am, edited 1 time in total.

I don't see how you could say it can't be mild, these are very subjective thought patterns, and almost any pair of thought patterns you can depict would also have a range of patterns in between which are comparable to both. It's just plain silly not to put a range on it, I think.

And well, to be honest, in my case, I received a lot of "favorable" viewing from a couple of psychological analyses, the administrators of which all seemed to feel that not enough money was going to cases like mine, and intentionally made them out to be worse than they appeared. At least, this was what I kept hearing.

I get along pretty well with others, and frankly used to get fed up with some of the more severe autistic behaviors I noticed, or failed to understand how a person could fail to understand some things in social situations, in ways I've heard are typically autistic.

I must reiterate, I think it's absolutely absurd to think of almost anything in psychology as a binary variance. If it were, it would almost certainly be something like a complete severing of an area in the brain, or a complete lack of some important hormone to brain development, or something like that, also binary, but it's not. That would be easily found and understood. It's much more complicated than that.

even i do get benefit check, i consider myself as mild since im able to live indepently!

I don't currently receive any special benefit for AS, though perhaps I should or could have. I judge myself to be in the mild end of the pool, from what I've seen here at Wrong Planet.

Mm, just to point out, being able to live independently is not necessarily a clear sign of the condition itself being mild. Just the life issues arising from the issue. Saying it's mild because you can function independently is like saying you have "mild" paraplegia compared to others, because you have a wheelchair you can get around in, and strong arms to push it with. It's perfectly possible to get into a niche where you don't need the things which are impaired by AS to function on your own, or to find an indirect work-around for those problems.

Not to say your condition's not mild. Just to say that's a poor argument for it being mild. =P

Yeah. I've had some close personal friends who clearly were far worse off than me, albeit no less intelligent. One friend I rather miss now was way worse than me in terms of AS-related problems, but undoubtedly smarter than me at everything else he ever tried. .___.

Being able to cope with things is no indication of severity of condition. Some people cope very well with horrendous difficulties. Others fall apart over relatively trivial things.

I agree. However, then I see someone who seems perfectly socially adept, even though they're a little odd, and they claim that they were diagnosed with AS. They can come across as neurotypical; no one would ever suspect that they have a disability. I then see someone who has a very distinctly autistic manner of speaking and talk only about a restricted area of interest. No, they don't have classic autism, as they did not have a speech delay and have a high IQ. They have completed a Ph. D., but cannot get a job. I think it's reasonable to then say that Person A is more mild than Person B. That is, if person A actually has Asperger's; they could have been misdiagnosed. And in my opinion, they are misdiagnosed, but they apparently don't think so.

Last edited by MathGirl on 24 May 2010, 9:13 am, edited 3 times in total.

You make a good point. My friends who were worse off were often prone to giving up or breaking down. I was never that completely destroyed by stress, nor particularly likely to play the victim and roll over, when I could be bothered to give a care, anyways.

Still though, some of my friends like this have truly exhibited a clear lack of ability in some areas I did rather possess it. I had one friend who just couldn't grasp some things about empathizing with other people, no matter how I explained it, and I could explain just about anything to him and he would be able to make sense of it. He was a really smart kid; close friend, and pretty darn clueless about a few things though, that just seemed beyond my help. o_o;

Thx for all the responses so far.

My view on the 'mildness' thing is that there's, obviously, an autistic spectrum. It's absurd to suggest, for example, that Bill Gates (IF he has ASD) is affected to the same degree as someone who can't hold down a job; can't live independently; can't form relationships; etc. Having said this, no two 'mild' cases are the same either, e.g. one 'mildly' affected person may be able to forge a successful career in, say, IT, but struggle with the opposite sex (the classic computer nerd), whilst another 'mildly' affected person may not have the common sense to do much career-wise, but just about has enough social skills to make some headway in making friends, and having some romantic experiences (this is what happened to me when I started to improve: my social skills improved before my common sense and 'employability').

I would like to consider myself moderatly spicy for any would be cannibals out there