Lupron for autism was a thing!? That is wild...but tbh, for uncontrollable adolescent boys (often raised by single moms) it actually does make some sense.

Wonder if the father is behind some of it.

From her post history, he was a domestic violence abuser and still gets time with the son.

That is a big problem for families whose kids are violent. There used to be public institutions for violent mentally ill people. But between Reagan shutting down the public, residential institutions-they cost a lot of money-& rights advocates who did rightly point out the abuses & also wanted everyone de-institutionalized, there was no allowance for keeping some better run places where people who truly needed it for their own safety & the safety of others, could live decently but restricted from harm.

Is there a benefit to grouping what used to be autism and Asperger's onto a spectrum?

Not in reality, but I think several sort of "perceptive" interests have aligned;

1. Euphemistic treadmill. No one wants "severe" anything, or for someone they love to have it. Just like we moved away from "spastic" and "retarded", even though those are perfectly good words that accurately describe a situation, we are moving away from using concepts like "severely autistic" and instead encouraged to think of it as a becautiful rainbow of individuals. This temporarily feels better for some of the affected people, especially parents of severely autistic kids. If your non-verbal kid has a disorder that rocket scientists can have, its less upsetting.

2. Malingerers benefit from having mild social awkwardness grouped with severe mental disabilities. If you just have aspergers you will be expected to figure out how to cope, whereas if you have "autism spectrum disorder" no one knows whether a loud noise will make you just flinch a bit or start shitting your pants and screaming. There's no expectation to cope/adapt or 'mask'. The barrier for entry into this category is low, and the potential severity is high, so theres a huge pay off if you want a "get out of everything forever" card.

3. Its a way for people of privilege to virture signal, building on the first two points. Look at meeee im such a good person I think you should have a full time support worker for your social awkwardness and your non-verbal teen is totally just like all these scientists and inventors!

The only people who couldve fought to keep the aspergers label are the families of autistic kids, who are obviously busy, and the aspies themselves, who would inherantly struggle with that sort of activism.

There is absolutely no benefit from what I can see.

One of my neighbors has children with autism. One will be socially awkward but will likely be able to support himself since he seems to be of average intelligence (at least), while the other is a teenager who probably says about 10 words a day and appears quite intellectually delayed. Thankfully he doesn't appear violent at all.

There’s a big push from autism activists to completely remove any kind of spectrum, that if you have autism that’s it. It makes it very difficult because it muddies the water with how much someone struggles - it’s also stopped the pushing of people who are living with autism who are capible of learning and there’s more and more pre pressure put on services to accommodate people who have the ability to do things themselves who don’t want to.

The poster above you asked about housing and basically it’s really difficult in these situations. He will most likely end up in some kind of shared/ supported living environment (which is essentially a group home but called something different when we’re talking about adults like this man because it effects them their whole lives) and usually you try to match people up so they foster a bit of a community and are more likely to get along. Generally there is work with some kind of positive behaviour support team and phychologists to identify triggers that cause violent outbursts and staff should be trained to minimise this. If it’s really bad and they’re overly triggered by other people they might try independant living but that varies on how successful it is, if they have learning disabilities you have to consider other aspects like how well they can maintain a tenancy and do they understand what will happen if they don’t pay the bills, they might need to have someone manage their money for them.

There’s a lot of autism activists who are self diagnosed or on the milder side of the autism diagnosis scale. I think they get frustrated that they’re not seen as being “truly autistic”. People who experience it in a milder manner should have appropriate accommodations made for them in my opinion to allow them to live normal lives and engage in public life

I did an autism professional training day and the example diagnostic video interview they showed of a woman with autism was a nerdy socially awkward late teens QwEeR whose “special interest” was “tv shows, like Sherlock and Supernatural”. No questions about her online habits and how much time she was spending on line. Completely affirming. This was meant to be an example of a good diagnostic assessment.

They clearly thought they were showcasing diversity, when they were really just showing arrested development thanks to a raging Tumblr addiction. No doubt there’s a sizeable amount of tumblarinas with some sort of (milder) form of autism I’m not denying that, but for a supposedly gold standard example of a “psychosocial assessment” it certainly left out a whole lot of important context about this young woman’s influences.

Wow, thanks for the report from the actual professionals. This is scary.

Urgh, this is awful. Thank you for the insight