Suicidal

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Hi I am a 21 year old individual in college with Asperger's and I am a Psych major. I would consider myself High Functioning as I have Girlfriend and I am in a Fraternity and have held down a steady job that I am considering going into after college. I currently work part time at a facility that helps children with Autism, we use behaviorism to change problem behavior. Anyways I read a statistic that 80% of Autistic individuals are unemployed after college and can not find jobs, this scared me so much and I have felt dread and hopelessness since reading it. I am currently considering Suicide as I do not want to live a life where I cannot find a job and wither away. In addition I am in love with my current girlfriend and I want to provide for her, but knowing this statistic does not provide high hopes. Anyways you might say "you will be fine you can hold down a job" sure right now I can but what about in the future, I do have deficits like sometimes I don't know vague instructions like "Turn off the Valve right there" like I get confused because Its so vague.Anyways what should I do?

Many of us work and support families. We need more people in the psych field who have first-hand knowledge of the spectrum, too. I would say believe in yourself. Don't let other people's doom and gloom get to you. Certainly don't believe people who say that your only value is how much money you make. Keep in touch with a good therapist. Live.

I'm a 23 year old who went through college, and have struggled, but have found success since. If you just need someone to talk to, send me a PM. Even though it doesn't always seem this way, and even though it can be tough, your life is your most precious gift!

Welcome to wrong planet


You can not assume because it is bad for autistic college grads now it will be as bad in 10 years time.

When I was young bieng gay was considered devient, preverted and it was thought gays should never be around children because they would molest them and brainwash them into thinking the “gay lifestyle” is a good thing. Now they can legally get married. When I was young there was no knowledge of Aspergers or the Autism spectrum. Yes things can and do change.

You are doing better then most autistics which means you have a better foundation to build on or if things get rough to fall back on. I would be lying to you if I said I guarantee you are going to be fine but what I am saying is do not assume.

Your learning is not done, you will learn what is meant by certain non direct or vague expressions.


Are you doing all these things the frat, the job, the behavoirism etc because you like it or because that is what successful people are supposed to do? If it is the latter my quess is that is your problem.

Whats wrong with not working?

I don't work and I get to spend all day doing things I enjoy instead of being a slave to capitalism...

You’ve done pretty good for yourself. Much better than I ever did.

Then you read some unproven statistic.

Then you want to kill yourself?

Makes absolutely no sense!

I know this is simplistic—but perspective is the key here. What makes you think YOU will be one of the “80%”?

Anyway, I find this statistic erroneous. Frankly, even the most "neurotypical" of college graduates are having difficulty finding jobs these days.

It’s a fact that many people with Aspergers/autism succeed despite the supposed “odds.” I haven’t done that great....but I’ve done okay.

Get a hold of yourself, and graduate.

Forget all the f*****g statistics.

This sort of thing makes my blood boil.

To ASPartOfMe , Yes I do enjoy those things, I tend to get like to get out of my comfort zone. And kraftiekortie your right I was kind of in a panic once I saw this, I tend to look at things as a statistic and if there is a majority of something I tend to view myself being in that majority. And Earthbound_Alien I guess that might work for you and more power to you, but I wanna do something with my life, my dream is to show the world who we are and get us equality, Did you know most NT's donate money to Autismspeaks yet Autismspeaks is a terrible organization and puts most of there money, I believe like most of the 54 million in donations (Don't trust me on this, but I know its a high number) in to finding a cure and providing only 15.7 million into family services and aid. I want to change this, but as I said I get scared by statistics and I feel I can't succeed in doing this.In the end however we need a voice to tell people we are not all like the stereotypical Aspergers they think of. We deserve to live a fulfilling life and be able to have reasonable accommodations in our jobs, as well as being able to inform our jobs we have it and not being fired on some BS reason or not getting a job during the interview. I thank you all for the support I feel much better.

Killing yourself would, probably, preclude you from doing all the things you said you wanted to do.

It's hard to do practical things from the "other side."

Haha Ya your right. As I said I was not really thinking straight.

If he could do the things he said from the grave, he'd be VERY high functioning.

Unfortunatly a lot of us are prone to these negative thought loops where we get an obsession over a negative thing and lose all context and prospective. The 80 and 90 percent autistic unemployment figures bandied about is a convenient number for organizations looking to get attention and money. The media repeats it endlessly. We do not know how real it is, it seems to be based on one or two studies of autistics from the entire spectrum.

Autism Speaks is still by far the most well known Autism “charity” in the USA. They can get a lot of celebrities to fundraise for them. Autism Speaks took wanting a cure out of their mission statement, the guy who founded the organization resigned as CEO when his wife got cancer and died and they added two autistic members to their 30 member board. A lot of people think this is all window dressing they are still a “hate group” at heart. I am not so sure. As you said not nearly enough money goes for services, and I oppose their influencial lobbying for Applied Behavioral Analysis and thier offensively named #MSSNG database project with google.

ASPartOfMe I guess I was a bit misinformed on the Autism Speaks thing my apologies. And I will have to argue against your view on Behavior Analysis, your right somewhat as somethings are BS for example, trying to change stemming and other coping mechanisms as i think they are relatively harmless and usually the parents want to get rid of it not the actual BCBA's. But it works really well for the extremely low functioning people,for example I worked with a kid that would bite and hit you and one instance broke someones arm because he didn't know how to communicate what he wanted. Once they worked with him for a month and a half he no longer agressed towards anyone and used a clipboard with pictures on it to communicate what he wanted. I do understand your qualms with it though, it tends to go after behaviors that aren't that big of a deal, but from what I seen they do it because they don't want the child to get bullied.

Those changes at Autism Speaks were very recent and a lot of people do not know about them.

You probably know most of anti-ABA arguments so I do not need to repeat them.
What I will say is that making a toddler do something so many hours per week is unnatural be the child NT or Autistic.

I think in needing the approval of an adult a child can be taught to be a "sheep" and more vulnerable to bullying.

There are no long term studies to see how ABA therapies effect outcomes years later. ABA has just not been in that widespread use for that long for this to occur.

The studies that have been done tend to say you need all those hours to get the preferred outcome(leaving, for now, the controversy of what is a preferred outcome). If the therapy ends or is lessened the not preferred behaviors return, another words it is a very expensive and time-consuming band-aid.

ABA in large part due to Autism Speaks lobbying has monopolized Autism therapy particularly behavior therapies in the United States. Like any monopoly, it makes it harder to for anybody that wants to research or use another therapy. Researchers need money and want respect. The easiest way to get that is work with the "gold standard" treatment which is ABA. Insurence covers ABA for kids. That is the law in most states. If a family wants an alternative treatment they may have to pay in full and uproot the family which is not good for a change-averse autistic kid. And then they are often taking a chance on a non peer reviewed therapy. If they can't afford it their choice is to take ABA or homeschool their child which they are often not capable of doing.

That all said it is what it is, so as said before the more Autistics involved the better.

jeremy

statistically, it does not make sense to lump together all colleges and all majors and all geographic areas.

you do not know what the definition of "autism" the article used, was. for example, did "autism" include the entire spectrum, or just "classical autism". you might not know the year of the article. the world is changing quickly.

after the 2008 recession, plenty of neurotypical college graduates have been unemployed.

not everyone unemployed commits suicide.

some that are employed, commit suicide.

there are sources of income besides employment per se. look up "unearned income".

even if someone has a job, some states are "at will" employers. in those states, anyone could get fired for any reason or no reason. as long as the employer does not tell the employee that the reason is an illegal reason.

unless you are psychic, you do not know what will happen in the future.

some autistics have jobs.

misunderstandings "Turn off the Valve right there", occur between neurotypicals, autistics, and NT/autistic combinations. it appears to me that i get involved in misunderstandings more often than neurotypicals. but, how much more often? and besides, misunderstandings happen.

sometimes, bosses fire employees for misunderstandings. however, bosses also fire employees for a wide variety of reasons.

seriously, it seems like going from reading an article that (rightly or wrongly) claims 80 percent of autistics with college diplomas do not get jobs, all the way to contemplating suicide, when you are only 21 and still in college, and employed. a bit of a leap.

Your right as I said I wasn't in the right state of mind.

When I was your age, Asperger's wasn't a thing, but I read that 80% of inventors failed professionally. That was still my best talent, though, so I called myself a designer, and didn't waste money on patents. I have changed course several times for options I hadn't dreamed of at 21. It didn't go according to plan, but it was interesting muddling through, and perhaps useful as well. Overall, I prefer making work to finding a job, and there's a trend toward contracting in employment generally.