Return of the "Refrigerator Mother" Theory?

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I just read this article: Depressed moms. It explains how children whose mothers suffer from postpartum depression have changes in their brains. The amygdala was about 20 percent larger in children of depressed mothers. This will result in increased stress responses to new situations as the child gets older and probably other unknown effects. Possibly it could relate to the lack of empathy and ability to connect with other people.

What I found interesting was reading this article: Toddler brain difference. It says that on average the amygdala of children with autism is 13 percent larger than NTs. A larger amygdala seems to be related to difficulty reading other people's emotions.

Do you think these two phenomena are related? Depression rates have been on the rise for years so could that be correlated with the rise in autism?

A weak connection, if there is any at all.

Autism has a genetic component that's much too large for it to be entirely accounted for by maternal depression; and there are many other factors that also play into the environment/genetics interaction. Because of that high heritability, we can conclude at least that the non-genetic factors causing autism must be extremely common--much more common than depression during pregnancy.

It could be a matter of the same genes being related to depression and autism, so that the mother has depression and the child has autism because they share genes. It could be that mothers who are stressed are more susceptible to depression and their children are more susceptible to autism. Or it could be that there is no relationship at all.

Every so often, there'll be an article about "oh, we found a cause for autism," and every time, it'll account for something like half a percent, one percent, two percent of the cause if they're really excited. I'm convinced that there's no such thing as THE cause for autism--just a matter of the right set of genes, and a lot of tiny little environmental factors that edge the odds up ever so slightly, and many of those tiny factors being so common that you can't even avoid them.

I don't think there is really a connection, in some cases it could contribute to additional factors I guess.

The rise in depression as a whole is more likely due to environmental factors and social pressures rather than any physical neural changes.

As aspies we are prone to depression due to the extra difficulties we face but I think that it really.

The refrigerator mother cannot explain why someone is naturally autistic, but when a child has a cold, distant and non-maternal mother they may develop autistic-like behaviour patterns more as a defence mechanism.

I just feel a little un-nerved to say I am "not really autistic", just because my family doesn't have any evidence of an autistic history, which would logically discount my autistic traits as being "natural" or "true" due to genetics. If I show autistic symptoms which hinder my abilities to function (which I do, there is no denying that) then if I were to have someone say "You aren't autistic because no-one else in your family is" would cause me a lot of worry as no-one would give me the help I need in certain areas due to the lack of a diagnosis. I think if behaviours which match the description for autism are not described as such, help will be harder to get.

And autism isn't really a physical 'thing' anyway. It's just a description of behaviours and mental characteristics, so if something matches that, it is autism - no matter what caused it. We have to name and label everything in life, otherwise there would be no order and no-one would know what we are on about. And that is especially important for abstract concepts such as mental disorders and conditions.

I don't think it's particularly fair to say someone isn't "truly" autistic just because their trigger for it isn't the same as yours. At the end of it all, it's still the same thing thing has resulted. Who's to say which is the trigger for "true" autism anyway?

I also think that brain damage could be a possibility, such as the areas of the brain involved with emotions, logic, movement etc. I think it's perfectly plausible. I'm no brain expert though so I'm sorry I can't explain much further.

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Another way of looking at it is traits that do not disappear when other factors are changed.

To be autistic you do not have to have other family members with it. I don't know where this idea came from, genetics don't have to work that way.

Generally autism is due to the way the brain works, so brain damage to certain areas can give traits but not actual autism, but as I said I am open to being proven wrong.

In response to MONKEY, why should genetic autism be called "actual" autism? Why can't "environmental autism", "traumatic autism" etc. be "actual autism" too? They are all still autism. If someone who shows strong autistic symptoms due to, say, brain damage is compared with someone with a mild form of Aspergers due to their genetic make-up - Who is considered to be 'more autistic'?

@ByattBrown - You're right in saying that genetically caused autism doesn't have to mean that others in the family have to show traits, although when genetics are mentioned as a causing factor, usually it's because other members of the family are either diagnosed with an ASD or at least show prominent traits.

If brain damage causes an alteration to the way the brain works, then the autistic traits resulting will therefore be due to 'how the brain works'. I cannot prove anyone wrong, as everything anyone really says on the matter of causes of autism is just hypotheses, but it makes a lot of sense to me to call the traits of autism just that.

I just don't think there is 1 single cause for a set of behaviours in people that cover a wide array of things, even more so when we consider how the traits can differ substantially from person to person.

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Thank you everyaspy that posted in this thread!
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We could say that the cause of autism is childhood. Every single person who is autistic has been, at one point, a child. There is a 100% cause and effect ratio there.

The above statement is an example of how people can blame autism on anything.

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I don't subscribe to the fridge mom theory, but that said if you look up attachment disorder, you'll find a set of symptons that are pretty close to those for aspergers. Attachment issues are treatable supposedly, but I guess that depends on the treatment before delay.

According to the intense world theory, parenting could have a role. If someone has the autistic genetic markers, some relatively mild environmental triggers could start the ball rolling. These mild triggers could be a depressed mother or some other stresses.

Who knows? All these disorders are so rare that I can't see how there is the opportunity to study them in depth.

Jason

Another possible interpretation.

The autistic child has far less interest in other people than is normal. The autism interferes with normal mother-child bonding. So autistic children are more likely to end up less close, emotionally, with their mothers.

"Experts" see this trend of autistic kids having distant mothers, and assume that one caused the other. Only problem is, they get the cause and effect reversed.