What's one AS topic you'd most like to see covered by media?

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I'm winding up my Diploma of Professional Writing and have recently obtained a gig writing for a state government website here in Australia.

On that site, I write articles for people with a wide range of disabilities. People with everything from multiple sclerosis to deafness to acquired brain injuries.

My AS diagnosis is only recent, and I hesitate to call it a 'disability' (I use that term to describe my real problem), as I find my AS to be an asset, for the most part, so I am in some senses new at this.

What I most want to know is this: if YOU could decide on ONE AS-related topic you feel you'd most like to see covered in a feature or news article, what would it be?

Although my mandate is not to write exclusively about AS, I'd like to write at least one piece.

I'd like it to be of greatest benefit to those of us on the wrong planet.

If there is one topic that stands out, I'll run it past my Editor and see what I can do with it.

Thank you all.

Empathy, are we empathetic, and just too shy to show it, or are we sociopaths?

I would love to see more cases of Asperger's in adulthood. I have the impression that people think this is only something that affects kids and/or teens. Of course it's just an impression...

Adult women with Asperger's.

I agree - I think a lot of people have that impression.
I was looking at a family health encyclopedia the other day, and it described autism as a childhood disorder.
I know there must be hundreds or thousands of conditions I know nothing about, but it does slightly annoy me that some people have such difficulty getting their heads around some simple facts about Asperger's.
I remember trying to explain to one person about how I'd had Asperger's my whole life but that I'd only been diagnosed in adulthood, and she just carried on as if it was something I'd just recently "caught".

Does it have to be one or the other?
I would rather not give NTs the impression that Asperger's has anything to do with shyness. It really annoyed me as a kid being told I was just shy, when the fact was I just did not know how to interact.
On the other hand, I do think some writers can overstate the differences in empathic abilities between aspies and NTs. I can't help thinking bullcrap when I read stuff about this magical ability NTs have to "read each other's minds".

i agree thats my my second choice but my first choice is sensory issues. I feel this is the least understood aspect of autism spectrum disorders by the public.

I also agree that you should write something about adult women with Asperger's. Another choice may be to write about how autistic spectrum disorders are portrayed in the media in general compared to actual individuals with autistic spectrum disorders. Maybe you could just write about how us aspies are portrayed in the media compared to how we're really like in "real" life. Sometimes it's not portrayed nearly as well as some would like. We are competent, and we are capable of living relatively normal lives. Sometimes criminals try to say that they have Asperger's, and are therefore incompetent, which shouldn't be the way that the world sees it. Hopefully people won't start viewing me or other aspies as incompetent enough to not know what a crime is or what the laws are. Yes, there are cases where it's severe enough where obsessions have taken over their lives, or comorbid conditions that they may have. However, it's not the same for all of us, or seemingly most of us to be honest. Anyways, good luck on finding a topic. There are a lot out there that would be very interesting.

I feel the media often lets EVERYBODY down by placing a slanted emphasis in reporting.

There is a philosophy I was taught in Journalism class that appalled me, yet I recognised it is the truth of media reporting: 'If it bleeds, it leads'.

In other words, everythiong must be sensationalised, and the darker aspects of the news take priority.

One of the things I love about writng is the capacity to communicate and connect with a large number of people at once.

Yet media entertainment does misrepresent ASDs and other things.

A case in point: The United States of Tara does not offer a very accurate impression of Dissociative Identity Disorder. I know something about DID as I helped to run a support group some time ago for my fellow survivors of sexual abuse and sexual abuse is the main cause of DID.

I thinki BOTH of these ideas are goers.

Women are too often forgotten.

The fact that men comprise the majority of Aspie people should never be used to allow people to forget that some Aspies are indeed women.

In sexual abuses, men are regarded as the minority, and that p[erception leads to unbalanced reporting, and a shortage of support services. It is considered economically inefficient to supply male sex abuse survivors with services.

So in a similar vein, if the powers that be perceive that Aspies are all male, then female Aspies would be at risk of being forgotten. In so doing, women with Asperger's will, just like male sex abuse survivors, likely find themselves without access to services.

A lot of really good ideas here. Thank you all!

I apologise for my absence the past couple of days, but my mother is ill and I had to attend to her.

That's actually a more interesting question than it may seem.

Many NTs do misinterpret we Aspies as being akin to sociopaths.

Our emotional reactions seem odd to NTs.

This is worth developing, thank you!

I think most NT people think of Rain Man if they think of an adult Aspie at all.

Perhaps this could be addressed as a personality profile piece that studies a prominent person who is prepared to discuss their Asperger's.

Identifying that person would be the hard part.

Please read my response below.

I think this is a very important idea.

Thanks!

Love your videos, BTW

It is actually like that for a number of conditions.

I have a friend with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and most people cannot understand how a 50-something person can have ADHD.

I think there is a common tendency for people to get a picture i their head about something, and they cannot shake that picture out.

Autism and Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder. I once read a leaflet on OCPD and they mentioned childhood traits of OCPD (personality disorders cannot be diagnosed in children, btw, but children can show traits) and they had a big list of traits, including:

1. Struggles socially
2.May refuse being cuddled
3.Make a fuss in public if things go wrong
4.Tends to be preoccupied with one thing day in and day out.
5.Fearful and anxious.
6.Opts out of things to avoid stress
7.Fussy
8.Finds it harder than other children to master skills such as tying laces
9.May show symptoms of sensory processing disorder
10.Likes routine and gets upset when it needs to be changed
11.Arguementitive about definitions, for example, will lecture on the different between a coat and a jacket when someone calls a coat a jacket.
12.Fixed ideas of what is right and what is wrong, i.e, will think that lunch MUST be at 1pm and wont have their lunch any later.


There were a few more traits, but I chose the ones (the majority of the traits, actually) that could also be common in autism.

I fit the criteria for OCPD perfectly. I don't think I would be diagosed with it or require a diagnosis because I don't know how disordered my perfectionism is, really. However, I see these symptoms in AS anyway and I am curious and highly interested in any kind of research that discusses a possible link, just how many people with the condition also have AS, how many people are misdiagnosed with aspergers but actually have OCPD and vice versa and so on.

I just realised that the question was about the media. I wouldn't like the media to talk about AS and it's possible link to OCPD. I'd like scientists to figure that out. On a slightly unrelated note, I would like to see anything on television on personality disorders.

I would like to see more about Autistic and Asperger's Syndrome people holding down jobs and
managing their lives as well as anyone else in spite of our social and sensory issues.

ASD is not just a childhood thing.

I would also like to see more about adults with ASD's who are supporting themselves and holding down jobs in spite of difficulties, that autism isn't just a childhood thing.