this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
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Autism

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

From what I've seen, here are some of the arguments against self-diagnosing:

  • Allistic people using autism as an excuse for their behaviors/difficulties, then denying the difficulties that actually autistic people experience and misrepresenting autistic people.
  • Narcissistic and psychopathic people pretending to be autistic to manipulate others, including actually autistic people.
  • Misdiagnosing themselves when their difficulties are actually related to other root causes, such as prolonged childhood abuse.

In the first two arguments, the problem with self-diagnosing is the social impact it has on others, including the autistic community. I can see why some people are against self-diagnosing since it could make their lives harder, especially autistic people. The last one is more about helping the individual properly understand them-self and developing a proper course of action to improve their lives, so it's an argument rooted in care.

I am not entirely against self-diagnosis. However, I think it could be re-phrased to "self-identified" since "diagnosis" is a medical term. It would be like a person saying, "I'm self-diagnosed with depression." That person isn't diagnosed with depression, though they very well may be depressed. It's really just a pedantic issue from my perspective. Regardless, I don't really care one way or the other because I understand what they are saying and think that an actually autistic person self-identifying as autistic is valid enough. Still, while I wont invalidate someone for self-identifying by gatekeeping autism, I tend to be a little cautious at first because of my experiences with people pretending to be autistic. In this case, I think the issue is that some jerks just can't let us have nice things.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Who wrote this rubbish? Doctors aren’t willingly recommending abuse, and most of them refer to specialists.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Doctors aren’t willingly recommending abuse

Boomer doctors aren't dead yet, and haven't learned anything since the 70s.

But seriously, think about whatever industry you're in. Surely there are the 'old guys' who haven't kept up with the progress, but are still around kind of doing a poor job of things. Not all old people, surely, but a fair number. At least, that's how it is in IT.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

That still doesn’t mean they recommend “abuse.” Every doctor in the US must renew their medical license every few years and that means taking continuing medical education classes. Nobody is recommending therapy from the 70s anymore.

Also, it’s still vague about what this “abuse” is so it’s hard to debunk a vague accusation.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

ABA is abuse and very commonly recommended to autistic people (or more often, forced on autistic kids by parents).

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Oh is that what ABA stands for?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I thought it stood for American Bar Association. I still do, since no other definition was offered. I would disagree that the American Bar Association is abuse.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 years ago

It refers to Applied Behavioural Analysis.