MatchboxVagabond wrote:
I'm sure some people are, there's just too many people on the planet for it to be zero. But, I think the more common issue is with people being misdiagnosed either as autistic when it's something else or as something else when they're autistic.
I keep hearing people swearing up and down that other people are faking it, but in all honesty, I just don't see what's in it for people to fake this diagnosis in particular when there are easier to fake diagnoses that come with a bunch of the same "perks" of being autistic without the same level of stigma. If somebody just wants accommodations, anxiety and depression are a lot easier to fake.
Actually, autism itself is more common than people think. I heard a Ted Talk speach given by one of the worlds leading psycologists. (A Doctor or Psycology) and he travelled the world doing research and found some interesting results. He would gather large groups of at least 1000 people (Usually 1200 people or more) from every country he travelled to and did not tell them what he was assessing them for. He used local psycologists to do the assessments where needed as one would need to know the culteral traits to work out what was normal and what was a trait. Anyone who knew what the assessment was for (E.g. Someone who had sat the assessment before was told not to tell anyone else, as he said this beforehand that if anyone knows what it is, to come to him and let him know without telling anyone else what it is, and he included them in the results to show they were or were not on the spectrum, but he didn't need them to be assessed again if that makes sense?)
What he found from the end results was fascinating as which ever country and people group he assessed, he found the results averaged at 6% of the population which were on the spectrum, and most who were didn't know it.
He said where the results varies from the 6%, they didn't vary much in that some areas had 5.9% and others 6.1% and he found this fascinating.
He said what he was doing had never been done before, as the approach was usually that docots sent patients to be assessed who either they thought needed an assessment, or the patients thought they needed to be assessed. No ones health system at the time just blanket tested everyone, and he found that the countries in the world with the best healthcare systems rarely ever went over 2.5% of their populations being on the spectrum and the countries with the poorest mental healthcare systems had as low as 1.5% or less of their populations diagnosed as being on the spectrum, which gave concern because it means so many people wefe being missed.
I'm not really surprised, I do think that there are things that could be done. In my case, I don't think I would have really missed out on much in terms of quality of life if I hadn't been screened for it until I started to have serious psychological issues in middle school. Up until then, I was doing OK, I didn't really have any friends and did have some issues managing the work load at school, but nothing had happened at that point that was so bad that a time machine would have made me want to go back and address it then as I did get some interventions for things like speech therapy and reading comprehension that seemed to have worked.
IMHO, the place where they really need to spend the money is screening pretty much every teen and tween that goes in for psychological testing for related traits, especially those that have more of an inward focus. The usual tools seem to work OK for the outwardly visible traits, but a bunch of folks get missed when the traits are focused inwardly.
25 Jul 2024, 11:34 am
