Guest Post by Sinead Murphy
There is growing pushback against the overdiagnosis of autism and its various offshoots (ADD, ADHD, etc).
Before welcoming this pushback as a return to sanity, we might consider the trajectory in which it is a latest move.
At the core of our great enthusiasm for autism and its like is a cohort of profoundly damaged children and young people.
Beneath the contested statistical studies and quasi-medical classifications, there has continued a steady expansion of their numbers.
Most likely, this is a crime. These children and young people do not present as a naturally-occurring glitch. They have suffered damage, damage that has been caused.
My money is on pharmaceutical toxins. Added to the falling away of the infrastructure of family, community and culture, which has run parallel with the rise of virtual, remote, abstract, and ever-fragmented experience.
How would such a crime, on so great a scale, be concealed?
By a great pile-in, that is how. By a general roll-out of the ‘spectrum.’
If almost everyone is or might be autistic, or a kind of autistic, those who are autistic are lost in the melee – lost in sheer numbers, but also in the atmosphere of normalcy that sheer numbers produces.
After all, if almost everyone is or might be autistic, then autism must be a natural thing, a ‘neurodivergence.’
And when the autism pile-in grows to implausibility? There is another opportunity for concealment of the autism crime.
We are told now that far too many have been diagnosed with autism, the fault of eager young health professionals and parents in search of low-hanging meaning.
There follows a blanket suspicion of autism. Everyone who is called ‘autistic’ falls under it.
So the damaged cohort of children and young people who have little hope of consolation in this life, is doubly obscured – by having been flooded with false fellows and then tarred with their falsity.
My son is one of these young people. He looks normal. In a stilled frame, the damage that he has suffered is not written on his face or on his body. Part of the tragedy that will forever mar his life is the lack of evidence of this tragedy. Unlike those who are consigned to a wheelchair or walk with a guide dog, my son is more likely to arouse alarm or annoyance than any more gentle human feeling.
And now, with licensed suspicion of the label ‘autism,’ the harm that my son has suffered is likely to be compounded by a general disbelief in the effects of that harm.
The circle is squared: the growing number of children and young people irrepparably damaged by one of the greatest ever crimes against humanity is hidden in a crowd that is then outed as faking it.
Insofar as these children and young people show themselves in behaviour that requires patience and understanding, impatience is justified, understanding suppressed.
And all the while, the crime goes undetected.
There has certainly been overdiagnosis of autism. That is true. But even the truth may be used to hide the truth.
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[ H/T The Burning Platform ]
There is growing pushback against the overdiagnosis of autism and its various offshoots (ADD, ADHD, etc).
Before welcoming this pushback as a return to sanity, we might consider the trajectory in which it is a latest move.
At the core of our great enthusiasm for autism and its like is a cohort of profoundly damaged children and young people.
Beneath the contested statistical studies and quasi-medical classifications, there has continued a steady expansion of their numbers.
Most likely, this is a crime. These children and young people do not present as a naturally-occurring glitch. They have suffered damage, damage that has been caused.
My money is on pharmaceutical toxins. Added to the falling away of the infrastructure of family, community and culture, which has run parallel with the rise of virtual, remote, abstract, and ever-fragmented experience.
How would such a crime, on so great a scale, be concealed?
By a great pile-in, that is how. By a general roll-out of the ‘spectrum.’
If almost everyone is or might be autistic, or a kind of autistic, those who are autistic are lost in the melee – lost in sheer numbers, but also in the atmosphere of normalcy that sheer numbers produces.
After all, if almost everyone is or might be autistic, then autism must be a natural thing, a ‘neurodivergence.’
And when the autism pile-in grows to implausibility? There is another opportunity for concealment of the autism crime.
We are told now that far too many have been diagnosed with autism, the fault of eager young health professionals and parents in search of low-hanging meaning.
There follows a blanket suspicion of autism. Everyone who is called ‘autistic’ falls under it.
So the damaged cohort of children and young people who have little hope of consolation in this life, is doubly obscured – by having been flooded with false fellows and then tarred with their falsity.
My son is one of these young people. He looks normal. In a stilled frame, the damage that he has suffered is not written on his face or on his body. Part of the tragedy that will forever mar his life is the lack of evidence of this tragedy. Unlike those who are consigned to a wheelchair or walk with a guide dog, my son is more likely to arouse alarm or annoyance than any more gentle human feeling.
And now, with licensed suspicion of the label ‘autism,’ the harm that my son has suffered is likely to be compounded by a general disbelief in the effects of that harm.
The circle is squared: the growing number of children and young people irrepparably damaged by one of the greatest ever crimes against humanity is hidden in a crowd that is then outed as faking it.
Insofar as these children and young people show themselves in behaviour that requires patience and understanding, impatience is justified, understanding suppressed.
And all the while, the crime goes undetected.
There has certainly been overdiagnosis of autism. That is true. But even the truth may be used to hide the truth.
Tweet
Continue reading...
[ H/T The Burning Platform ]
