Autism Speaks drops cure/prevention from Mission Statement

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If it is not autism specific treatments at best it is partially useful and often harmful. ABA is not readily available for older adults diagnosed with with autism. CBT is. But if you are not diagnosed because you are believed not to be really autistic there are no treatments likely for you. If I were to receive payment for every time I have read about adults seeking autism diagnosis only be to told "you do not need a label" or "I am not going to diagnose you because there is nothing we can do to help you" I would be able to find a clinician willing to give me any treatments I desire.

I did CBT last year and the thing is it is a clear cut example of a therapy that benefits people with High Functioning Autism over those who are more severely autistic. Basically their is little way CBT is going to help if you can't sit in a room and communicate. Their is also a reason why ABA is not available for High Functioning Autistic people. It goes over allot of basics that High Functioning Autistic people would have mastered.

Well a diagnosis for many autistic adults may be something of a liability. It may not help you get employed if people see you as someone with a disability.

Just asking out of interest but ASPartOfMe but what do you think from yours or others experience of the autism therapies being offered to adults?

The only therapies that were available to me were support groups and for me they were helpful but for many others on the spectrum going out and meeting with group of people they have never met is traumatic.

From what I read here help for older adults is most often non existant. If they do exist they exist they are sometimes helpful for co morbids but not Autism as a whole, or they are counterproductive as they are geared for NT's.

I can see why that would be the case and I am by no means saying that the amount of therapies provided for people on the spectrum. I personally know a score of autistic people who are too afraid to meet face to face with people. Would you say their is much in the way of treatment available for them?

CBT and hypnosis?

Not sure about CBT what about the other one.

Turning autism upside down: When symptoms are strengths

I am not endorsing these, that is why I put a question mark.

what is CBT

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

weak

Why?

As far as dropping a cure from their mission statement, I for one do not want to be cured. I can understand how severely autistic people might want to be, but I do not.

I have aspergers, and I am a functional (semi-functional, really) person. Sure, I get hired and fired faster and more frequently than Ubisoft puts out a half-finished game, and I have some problems understanding people, and I have a bit of face blindness, but there are so many things my autism gives me that I can only partially quantify with words that I would be sad to lose.

I can sometimes just read people. Not everybody, but some people. I can tell what they're thinking about. I am very good at picking out inconsistencies visually. I went looking for praying mantises with an entimologist once in some tall grass. I found a few dozen, he found zero. We were like ten feet apart.

I have perfect pitch. I can pick up a new musical instrument and be competent at it inside a month or two. I remember all my dreams in their entirety, and lots of other great things that I attribute to my autism.

I have seen autistic kids- mildly autistic I mean, do absolutely amazing things. My neighbor when I lived up north had an autistic six year old. The things this kid made with lego (this is before you could design lego things on PC) were MINDBLOWING. They were better than any licensed lego set I had ever seen. He just saw them in his head and built them. He could pick up a video game, play online, and be eviscerating everybody he came up against in minutes. I watched him play Homeworld once for an afternoon and people would tell him how amazing he was at it in chat and he'd say "I'm six" and they'd think he was joking. My friend's son, also six, is autistic. His understanding of 3 dimensional space is better than most adults. He builds incredible things. He can solve any puzzle in minutes. Amazing stuff.

I saw a video once, I'm so sad I don't remember this lady's name, she's a quantum physicist who has come up with EXTREMELY novel ideas that have blown the minds of her peers who say they would have never thought in those terms and she is considerably on the ASD spectrum to the point of having irregular speech and facial expressions. But she's a genius. She says society NEEDS people like us and doesn't realize it- because we think outside the box. We know we do that because we can't for the life of us know where the box IS but that's besides the point. Any autism where the person is able to be functional and is not crippled and isolated by their autism can be as much a gift as a burden if that person focuses and applies themselves- which again is hard for us... but I'm just saying.