Mental "disabilities" do not exist

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I don't like the term "Mental disability" when it is applied to conditions like AS. Unlike physical disabilities which are purely negative, most mental conditions are both positive and negative. For example AS reduces social ability, but gives back an obsessive personality and extreme logical thinking, both of which are very advantageous in todays computer driven society.

It is my view that "Mental disabilities" do not exist as such. They are just differences created by genetic mutations, the exact same mutations that allowed humans to evolve.

What is your view of this?

Mental "disabilities" do not exist - It took many years but eventually epilepsy (the many epilepsies) was given to neurology and declassified as a mental illness/whatever. Words: Alzheimer's, ADHDs, dyslexias, epilepsies, autism, brain injuries / sports concussions, and so on. In the non-profit field of religions, non-believers were labeled as heretics and burned at the stake for their theological mental disabilities. Even today, year 2010, there are non-profit religions which will excommunicate women for being priests (because being a woman priest is evil because the priest is a woman/women are evil)(gender discrimination/human rights discrimination).

Last edited by pgd on 09 Dec 2010, 4:42 am, edited 1 time in total.

I can understand what you are saying, but not everyone with AS is lucky enough to have good abilities with their disabilities. I personally call my AS a disability. I also call my TS a disability. I do have gifts, but I am still not sure how playing a piano moderately well or drawing row upon row of 1960's style houses is going to be of use to society, other than the occasional 'that's amazing'. No one would buy pictures of 1960's style housing because most people find Brutalist architecture hideous and unappealing (I like the symmetry).

I know people with AS who have no skills whatsoever. These people are never going to get jobs, have friends or be independent, it's just not possible. If they don't have a disability then what do they have? I don't think the term 'difference' would apply to these people. Also it's a bit rude to say that physical disabilities are only negative. That's a very old fashioned view. As with mental disabilities, physical ones cover a wide range of different conditions including blindness, deafness and other conditions. To say that these are purely negative is incorrect as some of the blind people I met at college were able to do so much good.

For conditions like mild AS, I understand your reasoning, but for more severe versions of autism and other conditions (schizophrenia, depression, bipolar etc.) , I am of the opinion that as long as they prevent people from living the life they want (within reason), they are definitely disabilities.

That's not to say that there is no silver lining; many bipolar people are reputed to be very creative and so forth, but the overwhelming bad points about the conditions are what lead people or their families to seek help in the first place, and any condition where people seek help for it is a disability in my book. That includes AS if a person finds it hard to cope with; not everyone is lucky enough to be high-functioning/have good role models or interests that conveniently fit into a job description. Some manage, others don't.

Not all genetic mutations are good. Some lead to success & therefore are more likely to be passed on, but many more mutations die out (often in utero). Current thought is that mental illnesses (and many others) are not simply down to genes either; epigenetics plays a huge role in conditions like anxiety and up-bringing probably also has a role.

That said, I am not condoning the blanket treatment of individuals that 'normal' people deem defective. Definitions of mental illnesses vary all the time & things that in the past were considered illnesses (homosexuality being the classic example) are now widely seen as just natural variations. A lot of that has to do with society changing, but also with people accepting themselves; if peoples' self-perception hadn't changed, then we might still be 'treating' them to this day.

[off topic; Jellybean, I love your avatar! Dibs on it if you ever decide to change ]

Last edited by Lene on 09 Dec 2010, 5:08 am, edited 1 time in total.

[also off topic]

Can't have it it's mine Nah I love my bunny too much

aw, darnit!

Autism gives me many skills but is a disability.
If AS was not a disability you would not have a word for yourself. Think about that.
If AS was just a difference then why is it in the psychiatrist manual?

Physical disabilities can be positive too. Blind people get their other senses enhanced, wheelchair users often get stronger arms.

Look up the social model of disability, seems like that's what you're aiming for.

Disability is more complicated than "is it bad or is it good". It means that there's a mismatch between what society plans for, and what kind of body you have. It doesn't have anything to do with whether the innate difference you have is bad, good, both, or neutral. And being physically disabled isn't always a bad thing. For many people, especially those born that way, it's just normal and we wouldn't necessarily want to be any other way.

So I get ticked off both by the "I hate being autistic so it's a disability" idea and the "I like being autistic so it's not a disability" idea. They both come from an understanding of disability that's highly medicalized and all about how being a disabled person is automatically bad.

Oh and I have a special loathing for the idea that "really mild autism" isn't a disability but all other autism is. That combines several ideas that don't really have much connection to reality. One of them is that "mild" vs "severe" autism is something that's readily able to be measured and quantified. The other is that "disability" means "bad" and that "severe" means "bad" so "severe" means "disability" but "mild" doesn't because "mild" means "good". Blecccch.

Oh also I don't think there's such a thing as autism that doesn't convey some kinds of skills, it's just a matter of whether those skills are easily recognized and whether they're anything the particular person values. There are always aspects of being autistic that.... it's hard to explain. But like... there's a trait. And that trait contains both elements of what most people would consider skills, and elements of what most people consider deficits. And traits like that trait exist even in most people who think they don't have them just because the skill isn't something obvious like "good at math" but is rather some sort of low-level perceptual skill that they don't recognize, and other things like that.

Also re: "If it wasn't a disability, why would it be in the DSM?" What's "a disability" is heavily governed by society. Like gay people have been disabled in some societies and times and not other societies and times. And that includes being in the DSM. When they were disabled that's because they weren't planned for and were oppressed in a certain pattern that other kinds of being disabled are oppressed in as well. It's hard to explain. But membership in the DSM doesn't say anything objective about a condition. It just says that as of right now the psychiatric establishment considers you to have a disorder. And the medical and psychiatric establishments are anything but infallible. Note that when I'm saying this I'm not arguing that autistic people aren't disabled, I'm just saying that line of reasoning doesn't really work very well. For instance, "transvestic fetishism" is in the DSM even though most of the social and personal emotional difficulties it causes are due to a society that doesn't accept it rather than it being inherently "bad" in some way. So is sleepwalking. The DSM is a very political and controversial document, it's not like the Word of God about Objective Reality or something.

I find the argument pointless. "Disabled" is a relative concept. If something disadvantages you to the extent that no coping mechanism can fully overcome that disadvantage, then someone else without that disadvantage will be more successful. So what label you put on this dynamic is irrelevant.

I am 52, by all external accounts functioning well in society. But it's nothing but a big lie because my coping mechanisms have really only served to barely get me through and hide the true state of my being. And I'll rip the eyes out of anyone that suggests that I haven't tried hard enough. If you could see the difference between me today and 35 or 40 years ago, you would not recognize me as the same person. And every change came out of HARD effort without even knowing what it was that was such an impediment. I changed myself without any help from social services or advocates or anything other than the patience of my wife and an irrational, stubborn refusal to give up. And in terms of success as measured by this culture, we have suffered for it. So you can tell me I don't have a disability if it makes you feel better. Call it what you want. All I know is that every day of my life has been a challenge against an unnamed adversary and it has had a profound impact on everything I have endeavored to accomplish

YOU live your entire life not knowing why the world passes you by like a freight train. Then tell me if Asperger's can be disabling or not.

I finally found the damn ticket office and I'm standing on the platform, armed with new knowledge and for the first time in my entire f*****g life I have some hope that there may be another train coming along that will take me to some better place than this prison I've been in.

Real life trumps arguments over semantics.

Yes. I do not have a mental illness, yet part of my mind certainly is somehow "disabled" from doing specific things other minds are quite able to do ... and there is simply no other explanation for the havoc of/in my life.

Perfect analogy!

this is absolutely beautiful. makes me wonder if i shouldn't be looking for a ticket office instead of watching people get in the train and thinking it's too late for me anyway....

for me, all the trains have long ago left the station and the depot has closed and been paved over into a parking lot full of cars whose owners are all somewhere else doing stuff.
so i eventually learned how to find a semblance of peace in my own hermithood. "If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with." [L. Frank Baum]

This is sad, poignant, and profound all at once. Finding peace is a treasure. Maybe that's where the last train took you.

Blind people are sharper in all the other senses, does that mean blindness isn't a disability?

I see AS as a disability since having trouble with facial expressions, body language, etc. means there's obviously something wrong. Yes there's benefits, but those benefits are more about who we are as individuals than AS itself. Everyone talks about how AS makes us super logical, yet I see all types of emotional outbursts about NT's and our supposed superiority. That whole super logical s**t is more of a personality thing than anything else.