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PaperclipPerfector  22d ago (text post)   28855 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 16, 2024

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I'm autistic, and I can tell that it runs in my family. My family tree has a lot of intelligent but eccentric people who likes model trains and such and have a silly form of humor. I've also heard "Coffee just makes me fall asleep haha" at quite a lot of family gatherings. Every time I watched trivia channels like "Who wants to be a millionare?" with my grandfather he'd know basically all the answers. My family also had a lot of criminals, mentally ill people (manic depression for instance), and millionares, so it's definitely not just autism and ADHD.

But yeah, I can see the traits, even though most of my family aren't diagnosed. Diagnosing mental illness is more of a recent thing, at least where I'm from (which I'm not telling).

I don't know if autism is genetic, or if it's mostly caused by stress like you claim, and my family just happens to be high in neuroticism (which results in high rates of autism). I do think mental illness is on a raise though, as the modern society is less in tune with human nature. Couple this with the modern and much lower thresholds for diagnosis of mental disorders, and the effect is basically explained.

My story is similar, dad's side of the family is Scots-Irish and riddled with alcoholism and autism. My grandfather and one of my uncles are both maybes, and my dad and my other uncle are definitely autistic. I'm more than old enough to have slid through the US educational system without ever being caught, though I did get some attention from a teacher or two that was sure that something was wrong with me along with plenty of, "not living up to his potential," type report cards. Took the Aspie test BITD, laughed at the ridiculously high score that I got out of it, not even understanding that "neurodiversity" was essentially a code word but definitely identifying with not being a normie. Hell, I even made jokes about all of the autism in the family! When I was formally diagnosed a little less than three years ago I just laughed and laughed. There was yet another thing in my life that was hiding in plain sight all along!

I agree that the changing criteria for autism is the primary driver for the huge increase in diagnosis rates, and combining it with Asperger's in the DSM-V further exacerbates that. I'd also say that we have a decent set of criteria for diagnosing autism, which of course is still separate from whether or not it's being over-diagnosed in children. On the question of whether or not it's an illness in and of itself, I personally don't see it that way, though to be fair I've lived with it all my life without having any precise idea of what it was. Rather I see it as a large set of mental trade-offs where things like hyperfocus can be incredibly helpful in some circumstances and brutally crippling in others, to the extent that we can often resemble the "this is fine" meme, drinking coffee at our kitchen tables while our house is burning down around us.

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