Is trauma the main 'cause' of autism?

Post Reply New Topic

To answer this question, you really need to have experienced several aspects:

1. You grew up in a normal/typical environment that did not pay any special respect to your autism. That is, you had to adapt to a normal social environment (at home, in school, at work, etc.) rather than having an environment that (partially) adapted to you. If you had very intelligent and considerate or autistic parents for example, it is safe to assume that they had or developed some kind of greater awareness for your condition and treated you accordingly. If you visited a non-regular special school, it is likely that it too adapted to some significant level to your condition. Key is to rule out that any 'special' adaption occurred during your childhood and adolescence, which possibly enabled you to develop better skills and coping strategies early on.

2. Your life changed at some point several years (literally years) ago, in such a way that you are no longer faced with much of any autistic challenges related to the interactions or lack of interaction with other people (including work, hence money you need to live, parents, etc.). That means: On the one hand you now have enough social contact, on the other hand the people are aware of your condition and respect it or the contact does not require awareness and you don't have to put considerable effort into maintaining or executing it. You are not really faced with pressures of society to get much into situations that require you to face challenges specific to autism. If you have executive dysfunction or trouble focusing on everyday tasks, that is a different aspect and not questioned here.

3. You must have reflected on your childhood/adolescence the last several years. That means you can even remember your childhood somewhat sufficiently and you have actively thought about your early life/years.

4. You did not experience any additional negative conditions/circumstances that could be responsible for your overall condition to a greater extent, e.g. physical child abuse or MS or chromosomal abnormalities, major brain damage, etc.

Under those conditions, you should 1. have experienced a pretty average childhood with autism without any environment-specific advantage or advantage that arose from chance, 2. have (at least for the last several years) overcome effectively, by chance or whatever means, the main psychological stressor of your condition, that is you are on a level of psychological stress pretty much on a par with a normal person who doesn't have any condition at all, maybe just stress from work or something but everything still within a 'normal' range. Please be aware that you can only really judge about the described stress level, if you meet the criteria. Otherwise, you can and will only judge from what you know, which is just insufficient for the kind of comparison made here (which is basically, comparing your internal mental state/mindset with the one of someone else).

If this is true, you are more or less able to draw the following comparison:
If you think back to your childhood, would you have possibly or certainly learned to adapt to your environment and overcome your mental differences much faster or sufficiently, if you had not experienced the stress levels you did? If you think back and compare the skills or understanding you acquired the last several years, including your current mental state, with time periods of your childhood, could you say that the main problem back then keeping you from learning and adapting was to deal with stress that cannot be described much differently than experiencing and living/coping with the effects of psychological trauma, which was targeted mostly towards situations where your difficulties were greatest? In fact, if your experiences had not been so traumatic, would you have had much more the opportunities to adapt such that your condition had not played such a big part in negative developments in your life (although challenging nonetheless).

(Note here: Yes, 'trauma' has medical/scientific definitions and of course you have to question and disrespect those definitions and derive their meaning from their actual implications in a greater, rationally coherent picture rather than from what someone somewhen defined them to be and not be or what was excluded in their meaning, just by defining it that way, in order to grasp what is meant here.)

Why do I ask this? First, to my experience, the answers to this are all yes. Of course if you assume that trauma occurs, it is caused by lack of adaption to or by the environment and lack of adaption causes trauma. But the key here is that autism is, in a pathological sense, not viewed as a disorder caused (as being a disorder) by stress or even trauma, it is viewed as being a disorder of development, a somewhat mysterious or not exactly specifiable mental deficit, which is almost exclusively responsible for all its symptoms. I believe that this is entirely untrue. Medically, you rock and beat your head against the wall because of autism and not because of extreme stress exposure or traumatic experiences. Children who suffered continued extreme physical abuse from an early age have such a huge overlap in symptoms with autistic children that you can't really deny the similarities. Of course there are again psychological theories, that they in fact just become autistic, etc. etc., which can either be accepted as somewhat meaningful or just as an 'excuse explanation' to avoid realizing the obvious. Much speaks against it, behavior of severely abused animals for example, to the extent that the long-term effects of severe childhood trauma would become more or less synonym with having autism.

My view is, that autism means being born with a different mindset or way of thinking, which is more fragile towards any kind of influence (heightened perception, more complicated way of understanding and therefore coping with anything, etc.). If there were sufficient recognition and respect for that difference in thought in the first place, it could be avoided to cause the kind of trauma I believe to occur and which is ultimately responsible for any kind of pathological impact on a person with autism. That doesn't mean that autism needs to be understood in its entirety, socially or scientifically, it just means realizing what kind of harm can happen that doesn't happen in normal children and just avoiding to cause that harm to them. It means putting knowledge above emotion and adapting social practice to a different 'type' of person, instead of forcing all people into being the same type.
To me, the real cure of autism can only happen by changing the environment (most important here is the home environment), and not the child, that is eliminating factors that cause severe trauma in order to enable a healthy and undisturbed development. That view is really fundamentally different from all current approaches, which mostly target at compensating for a kind of deficit by adding additional skills and coping strategies. While it might help, I don't believe it to be as effective and I don't believe it is the right end to start with.
I believe there is much emotional inhibition, by parents and professionals, towards accepting or realizing that trauma is the main element of autism, because it implies that we are and have been traumatizing children 'by accident' or by lack of knowledge all along, without even giving it much second though. Its much easier to come up with some diagnostic label and blame everything that troubles us on that. It's really what almost all mothers would prefer to do, because viewing things differently would break their heart. Its a shift of responsibility inevitably caused by rational realization of the implications, which is so entirely contrary to current educational and social practice that it just won't be accepted. Seeing the puzzle in pieces is emotionally much much more comforting than having it put together and realizing the misery of the whole picture.

So maybe now you do understand the question and why you just cannot answer it if you don't meet the criteria named above. If you are continuously abused all your life, you can't draw comparisons to a psychological state where abuse doesn't occur. The same way children who are physically abused do regard it as normal and cannot really grasp how it is like not to be (maybe even after they are removed from their abuser), you might be in the same situation where you do regard your mental state as normal, because you never experienced much differently your entire life. And autism goes much deeper than physical abuse, because it is so much harder to grasp its implications than it is to grasp that you are 'just' beaten up by your parents. Its much easier to understand a simple physical action than it is to understand having a different type of cognition.

I hope everything I wrote can be understood and am anxious to hear your response.

EDIT note: What I failed to clarify is, that I make a distinction between autism in a pathological sense and just thinking differently. Currently, you only 'get' to be autistic if you have pathological symptoms, and that is caused by having the said mental differences. Hence currently autism is synonym with having those mental differences. This isn't necessarily true though, supported by the fact that there are people with autism who adapted later to become relatively normal and people who you might have met who clearly think on an autistic level but never had any significant problems. It is entirely understandable, that an environment could exist for almost any mental disorder, which would 'prevent' that mental disorder from becoming symptomatic. Take something as extreme as schizophrenic psychosis for example, which could possibly never become acute if not triggered by stress. Though such an environment where a person never experiences much stress is unrealistic, it could exist. Based on this thought experiment, it should be clear that there can be on the one hand mental differences (which usually end up in autism) and that there is autism, which is a diagnosis based on pathological symptoms. Though currently both things are synonym, they logically don't have to be. What I mean by autism here is that those mental differences have become pathological such that it allows for a diagnosis and not just that someone is mentally fundamentally different.

With regard to your first point - I got a book out of the library called Alphabet Kids, which is 'a guide to developmental, neurobiological, and psychological disorders for parents and professionals', in which there is a lady with developmental Gerstmann's syndrome, and it says that 'she is very happy that she was able to develop enough skills to counteract her deficits and that she could bluff her way through most of her schooling', that 'she believes that had she been properly diagnosed as a child, she would not have developed those skills', which is in contrast to you saying that any ''special' adaption [you mean adaptation there btw] occurred during your childhood and adolescence' could have 'possibly enabled you to develop better skills and coping strategies early on'. I know you said *could*, but still, it's interesting. DGS is 'a neurological disorder characterized by learning disabilities such as dysgraphia, the inability to write, and dyscalculia, the lack of understanding of arithmetic rules; the inability to distinguish right from left; and a lack of sense of the fingers (finger agnosia); however individuals with it can be very intelligent. The woman profiled, Susan, 'cannot do simple math problems; has trouble reading word endings; is distracted by punctuation on the printed page; lacks the organizational skills to write an outline; needs to be grounded when she walks [with a blind cane]; can't crawl; and has a low thresold for sensory stimulation, but went to Yale and has become a well-respected laywer and law professor' - the book doesn't explain how she 'managed' high school; she has strong verbal skills but that's not going to make you able to add two one digit numbers together (I presume that's what it means when it says 'simple numbers'), which she cannot do. So I'm sceptical of what she says which seems to be that you should be wary of giving students with LDs accommodations (which as many of you will know, is already the case with schools) - "I'm worried about children who might have a lot to give and won't be able to give because they were not given the opportunity to expand their compensatory skills". Just needed to articulate that before I read the rest of your post.

Interesting argument.

Could it be that Autism, like other mental disorders, is triggered by the environment in some cases? In some disorders, such as schizophrenia, stress is an important factor. Could autism be similar?

I've thought about this too and don't have an answer, but it could certainly be an interesting research subject for people researching autism.

In my opinion, I have my doubts that autism is triggered by trauma. How can it be that the diagnostic criteria requires symptoms to be present (if latent) in childhood if that is so?

I doubt it. For one, I was targeted for abuse and bullying precisely because I am different. If I hadn't been different, my environment might have been more typical. I was not abused until I was nine years old, and I was obviously different before that. Being mistreated for being different did lead me to try to look more normal for a short period of time, until I realized this was impossible.

The autistics I've met who weren't abused in childhood seem to be doing better mostly because their parents were aware of their needs and willing to accommodate them. Often times these parents turn into mother bears when their kids don't get what they need at school. You don't want to have to stare down an angry parent of an autistic child, especially when you know very well you haven't been giving that kid the best education you can give.

I guess if you were on the very border of diagnosis, you might be able to deal with it on your own, given a very friendly environment... But any more severe than that, and you're autistic whether people treat you well or not.

Well my mother told me I would have grown up to be autistic if I stayed in that special ed classroom and if they had listened to their doctors about me. So would I have not been this normal if my mom didn't put me in the classroom with normal kids or didn't work with me and if she just ignored it all assuming I will catch up on my own? What if I didn't have speech therapy either? Who knows where I would have been now.


I have had tons of ear infections as an infant and then hearing loss and the infant and toddler years are the most important stages in life and brain development where the child is watching people and observing what they do and learning how to interact and learn social skills and learning how to speak and form words. I missed all that because I was deaf so it effected me in the future. Could my poor social skills and lack of TOM been due to hearing loss? What about me not understanding turn taking and I would do one sided conversations because I missed learning that skill as a toddler? Mom told me I was on track and learning language and was babbling and then I stopped when I lost my hearing and I made less sounds because I heard less sounds. I even stopped watching people and all and paid more attention to objects and things around me rather than people. I still looked at my dad however when he spoke because he had a loud voice and I could still hear some sounds. But I couldn't hear fog horns or trains. My parents even had to teach me eye contact and teachers and I remember them telling me "Beth look at me" and they point to their mouth as they say a word. That was how they were teaching me how to talk. But I have always watched people to figure things out because that was how I figured out how I am supposed to act and behave and what am I do to but unfortunately I would copy the wrong behavior too and that was one of the reasons why my parents pulled me out of that special ed classroom and put me in a classroom with normal kids. I was a adult when I was finally doing eye contact because I had figured out from reading online you are to look at people in the eyes, not look at their mouths to see what they are saying and I quit doing that when I could understand a word people are saying and when I knew how to speak. I look at their faces or their hands or something on them. It took me a while to learn it and it's not like I did it over night. It took remembering to do it and forcing myself and I got used to it and it became a habit. Sometimes I still have trouble with it but doesn't everyone?

I read if a child doesn't do eye contact, that is how they don't learn these things so could that be why autistic babies fail? Plus having no interest in people will also not have them learn these things either because they wouldn't be watching them is one thing. But that book I had read made it sound like autism is caused in the environment and it made it sound like autistic kids can learn these things if they had eye contact in the first place and watched people in their infancy and toddler years. No wonder the book was free on ebook. It's called Pipers of Autism. I don't remember the exact title name and my Nook Color is too low on battery for me to turn it on so it needs to be charged. I didn't bother finishing the whole book. I may someday but right now I just quit reading it because it was sounding like parents are at fault for it and blaming his nephew's autism on watching too much television because his parents let him. No he was watching too much TV because of his autism so he was obsessed with the movie Cars and preferred learning shows on TV like sesame Street and he had no interest in people. Not because the TV did it. Then when he got help, he is all of a sudden normal and interacts with him now but he is still autistic of course.

There seems to be a endless loop of cause and effect here for me. I had the definite autist traits when I very young, but they were difficult for anyone to see. At about 10, I began to be bullied severely and as a result, my autism became more obvious as I became more withdrawn, but if I was bullied already, then I must have been obviously autistic before that, BUT if I were, no one sent me off to the psychologist because I was told by parents and teachers that I was perfectly normal until I was 10 no matter how much I complained...

So, I can only conclude that stress or trauma can exacerbate the autism, but certainly does not cause it.

I had a normal upbringing, my brother turned out NT, but I still had AS. I reached all the milestones at the average stages when I was a baby and toddler, and all the AS symptoms didn't become noticeable until I was almost 4 and a half. My parents are not to blame. I was just born with AS.

I do believe people can have Autistic traits from PTSD. My mum was one of 4, and they all got brought up by one descent (but unconfident) mum, and an alcohol dad, who was a severe alcoholic, and he caused his 4 children a lot of stress and unstability. They are all NT (well, the youngest one has some typical AS traits but is not diagnosed), but all seem unconfident and nervous, which affects some of their social skills and increases their stress and anxiety levels which go higher than average.

Yeah. My mom tried not to "label" me. I grew up autistic anyway, and worse off than I would have been if somebody had bothered to clue me in and teach me useful things. Instead, I pretty much crashed after I got out on my own.

If I understand what you're saying, the trauma in people with autism is caused by those who try to teach them coping skills and using traditional approaches to treating autism. Is that right?

If so... I agree with trauma exacerbating the condition, but it's been my experience that trauma is caused by a lack of coping skills and treatment, not treatment itself. And I grew up in a very conservative household, very sheltered, even though I wasn't diagnosed. What happened was I hated all the restrictions and wanted more life experience. You really can't shelter kids from everything in life. Instead, I think it's best to teach them how to cope with its ups and downs.

You need a "I don't know" option.

Regardless, I'm skeptical on the idea. While a plausible theory would be that due to social stress and environmental hazards, Autistics could be more susceptible to this kind of trauma, the idea that you are proposing doesn't seem very plausible.

What I will say is that, what IS likely is that the increased susceptibility to this kind of trauma can lead to more diagnoses in areas where this happens, due to the social aversion aspects possibly being increased. An Autistic child can still make attempts to be social, because they begin with the assumption that if it's that simple for everyone else, it should be simple for them. Until they either find that to be false, or find that they don't actually like it very much. The only plausible aspect of this is that trauma would increase the social aversion aspects - everything else is highly speculatory.

I agree. There should have been an option for "I don't know" as in my case, I had epilepsy as an infant that probably triggered my Aspie traits. I was too high functioning as a child for an autism diagnosis, plus I'm female, which meant that I didn't get diagnosed officially until I was an adult. During my childhood, only low-functioning males tended to get diagnosed with autism more often than girls did. Even as late as the mid 90's a therapist did say that "if there were such a thing as a little bit autistic" that would fit me. I went to preschool at a school for special needs children, but went to regular schools starting in elementary school, and only got speech therapy. Being pulled out of class for that speech therapy did make me a target for bullying as I was different, but by the time I was in high school, the bullying pretty much ended. The main reason I went to regular schools after preschool was that the school was more for students with severe disabilities who needed a more structured environment than even the special ed classes would have offered.

I think its likely trauma or repetitive negative life experiances could potentially consider to symptoms. But the only mental disorder I know of that is actually caused by trauma is PTSD and even for that one has to have a genetic predisposition for it...since not everyone who faces trauma gets that disorder.

But yeah its true of most mental disorders that symptoms can become worse the more stress the person with a mental disorder is under. So it could potentially contribute to some autism symptoms. Also if someone with autism does aqquire PTSD from trauma some of those symptoms could be mistaken for worsened autism symptoms.

Some resources say that stress is a possible cause of mental illness, along with genetics and other environmental factors. Like for example, why is an identical twin of someone with schizophrenia only 48% likely to have schizophrenia.

The "Diathesis-stress" relationship would explain that it could be because "people with a biological predisposition develop schizophrenia only if certain kinds of psychological events, personal stress, or societal stress are also present."

There was an interesting segment on (Australian) 60 minutes on Sunday called Accidental Genius, people who have acquired savant skills later in life after trauma (usually a blow to the head) -
http://sixtyminutes.ninemsn.com.au/arti ... id=8572537

that would make it a factor along with genetics and envirionment, but yeah still an important factor.

Trauma doesn't cause autism but trauma can make coping with being autistic harder.