https://www.spectrumnews.org/features/d ... eneration/
I posted this a couple of years back, though we have had many new members since, and the older of these will perhaps find this a very interesting commentary.
The comment about mental health professionals not having enough skills to distinguish AS is still apparently valid. I think that the training they get in making differential diagnosis may still woefully inadequate (if they get it at all).
I don't understand why there is no will in the medical profession to do better, to train students more adequately.
Psychologists, by comparison, have made big advances in this in the past five years, and I am constantly impressed by the ones in their 30s who are practising and writing about AS now, with some exceptions of course who have drunk the Autism Speaks kind of Kool-Aid. The training of psychologists has been updated and takes into account the problems that neurotypical behaviour toward AS people is an important factor. But psychiatrists by and large seem still hidebound, patriarchal, platitudinous, patronising, (the 4 P's of misuse of medical power - I invented that phrase!) and very inflexible in their dated ideas and misconceptions which they impose on clients.
If they even took the step of inviting AS adults to address their conferences and present occasional papers they might learn something, however this won't happen in an environment where they believe that they hold a monolopy of expertise in a field where they clearly don't.
Hope you find the article interesting, though it is also sad.
22 Jun 2018, 10:05 pm
