LGBT+ hitching their cause to autism and neurodiversity

Wow I never knew any of those facts, isn't the human body amazingly complex!

Then there is PANDAS which is often characterised by sudden onset psychiatric symptoms like OCD or acute anxiety caused by bacterial infection.

Just to throw a curve ball in I saw a few studies a while back linking the gut health and biomes to the brain and MH so now we know it is even more complex!

Well it's kind of a truism that the physical body in some way is related to the psychological self.

I don't think you can limit that to the brain, we don't know that the mind, or personality, or self, is just about the brain, in fact we have a pretty good idea that it isn't. (Which is why this futurist idea of downloading a person's brain into a computer in order to attain a sort of immortality doesn't really work.)

But in terms of mental illness, we are really so far from any kind of understanding of how that works I don't know that it is all that useful, practically. We know a lot of psychiatric pain can come out of things like relationships, conflicts in ourselves, from the environment, and the only way to really overcome them is to resolve the conflict to allow us to move forward. What that means in terms of brain structure or chemistry, we don't know.

Maybe one day we can manipulate that stuff directly, but I have doubts.

@LobsterNapkin

"Neurological" pertains to the central and peripheral nervous system which includes the brain. Mental illness is of the mind, which is of the brain. Neuropsychiatry was a an old discipline that split but is now being studied again.

www.rcpsych.ac.uk/become-a-psychiatrist/choose-psychiatry/what-is-psychiatry/types-of-psychiatrist/neuropsychiatry
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuropsychiatry

My view of the "mind-body problem" is that the mind and brain are not separate as the brain is what manifests the mind. That is why people have been seen to change their personality after a trauma like lobotomy or railroad spike through the skull. I believe other (more poorly understood) causes affect the brain/mind and result in psychiatric disorders. As I have stated, I personally don't see how it is useful to deny the neurobiological features of mental illness. By the way, I'm not saying there are not treatments outside of the pharmaceutical.

I have read the article you linked and I don't think it explicity stated whether psychiatric disorders should be considered as neurological or not. The experiment described seems to conclude that stigma influences the treatment of the mentally ill. I previously stated that efforts should be made to reduce the stigma. As for cultural differences in psychiatric disorders, I would be speculating but I assume upon comparison there would be overlapping features. Differences in societal stressors may affect the presentation, but underlying behaviors could be similar.

I find the emerging study of epigenetics to be compelling in relation to genetic and environmental factors and their influence on mental health.

www.apa.org/monitor/2012/06/roots

Just to add - it's a worthwhile article which I think gives some insight in particular to RODG type possibilities.

There's been a very strong tendency in NA and the west to want to conceptualize mental illness in general as very much like other illnesses, like a cold, or diabetes, and the popularization of presenting it as being caused by chemical imbalance in the brain, to be solved by medication, was part of that. It was always a myth though - psychiatric researchers and psychiatrists were always aware that we don't know that depression is caused by that at all. But they thought telling people it was would encourage them to take their medication and reduce stigma.

What we don't know about this is a lot. But very few people are aware of the extent to which many mental illnesses are culturally defined.

www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/magazine/10psyche-t.html

Whereas others, like anorexia, may appear in some places but not others, or may seem to have a totally different origin, or manifest very differently, or effect a different group of people.

But that doesn't ruled out a physiological basis which is mediated by environmental factors. Nor does it rule out genetic factors. Many diseases which are clearly physiological occur in some populations but not others.

Neurological disorders are damage or malfunctioning of the brain and nervous system.

We really don't know that all things classed as mental illness fall under that definition. This idea that people had that depression, for example, was caused by a chemical imbalance, was never very solidly founded.

There is some reason to think, from the evidence of brain scans, that psychiatric and neurological disorders aren't really the same kind of thing. What that means isn't clear and may be different for different problems.

However, what is clear is that some disorders, like schizophrenia, seem to behave like we'd expect in terms of an illness with a clear physiological basis. They seem to look similar, and follow a similar course, and affect a similar group of people, everywhere. Whereas others, like anorexia, may appear in some places but not others, or may seem to have a totally different origin, or manifest very differently, or effect a different group of people.

I don't for a minute believe Lesbians are hitching our cause to anything. Get the "L" out!

Is it not at all clear that all mental illnesses arise from the brain or some effect on it? The various disorders are definitely different from each other but I mainly object to the idea that mental disorders aren't neurological. What are they then? Moral failings?

Schizophrenia is one of the most well known psychiatric illnesses but there is clear evidence of its neurobiological origin. Please tell me why else disorders in the function of the brain should be categorized as not neurological if not for the stigma. The most legitimate reason is that they are specialized disciplines for doctors. One will deal with physical and motor defecits, the other with behavior and mood. Otherwise I do not think its useful to insist mental illness is no connected to neurology. Why else do neuroscientists research the neurobiology of psychiatric disease?

I don't think you can assume that all mental illnesses are like schizophrenia, though. In fact it seems to be one of a very small group of mental illnesses that are fairly consistent and identifiable across cultures.

It's not at all clear that applies to most mental illness.

Thank you for that @BitMuch - it answers a few questions that I've had for years. Ds1 has a dual diagnosis of adhd and asd and is also hypermobile. It's always struck me that the extreme hyperactivity and inattention he exhibited as a small child must have the same cause as his constant need to touch everything at the time. Medicating his adhd merely took the edge off the hyperactivity but his ability to communicate verbally really took off - he had language and could read fluently but couldn't tell us anything and ended up screaming, constantly, presumably with frustration.

That's crap — I was shifted to adult services age 16 (both CMHT and inpatient), and though their setup obviously wasn't organised with me in mind, they did at least take me on, recognising that I didn't have other options. TBH I think for a lot of adolescents, adult-focused services can do a better job than child-focused ones, in some ways, though obviously it's not ideal.

Well in our area there is a complete gap in camhs provision for 16-18's. No CAMHS post 16 & can't access adult services till 18. The only way to get care between those ages is with a hospital admission.

This is for all children.

It's shocking. Yet we are led to believe that the only vulnerable children are those with gender dysphoria. Complete lies.

It shocks me when I see that camhs are even worse-funded and more limited than adult services because I know how appalling adult services have become.

I had the same issue in adult services — they told me they don't treat people with ASD. I pointed out that it was direct discrimination under the equality act, went to PALS and got a second opinion from a doctor in the team covering a different part of the city, and magically my mental illness was suddenly treatable :-/

This really pisses me off because while it's true to a certain extent, professionals who say this are often doing so with a subtext of "so we're not going to even bother trying to treat it"

Correct, what is worth is that there is no mental health provision at all for children with autism AND anxiety and depression in my area.

This has been confirmed by the CCG. I believe it is discriminatory because it denied access to a service due to a protected characteristic.

It's no wonder autistic kids are vulnerable to the trans agenda when they are being denied mental health care when needed, I think this is what really gets my back up when i hear trans people, particularly non binary trans people complaining that they are discriminated against in connection to access to health care. Well autistic children are but no one cares about that!

When my son was diagnosed with asd the team said 'anxiety was a sister diagnosis and the two go hand in hand"

This really pisses me off because while it's true to a certain extent, professionals who say this are often doing so with a subtext of "so we're not going to even bother trying to treat it".

Both my son and daughter are autistic.

Both have co- morbid anxiety and my son has significant depression. There are other co-morbidities, hypermobility, dyslexia and SPD which is more significant for my daughter than for my son.

Mental health services definitely think that autism and anxiety and depression go hand in hand such that CAMHS in many areas 'do not routinely treat children with an autism diagnosis for anxiety and depression' because they believe it is caused by the neuro diversity not by factors that can be addressed within their service.

In reality there are very few professionals who really understand these issues. I have been trying for some time to find a private psychologist to help my son manage his crippling anxiety and depression with no luck.

Autistic children are vulnerable to this ideology because it provides an explanation for differences. My daughter meets nearly all of the criteria for a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, the sensory issues being the cause. I have been viciously attacked online by self proclaimed autistics who hate autism parents who have a different opinion from them and question this ideology.

It's a mess. These kids are vulnerable and have no where to turn.

I was told similar as you about ASD and anxiety but they also linked his ASD with his ADHD, Tourettes, dyslexia and hypermobility saying that they are a family of conditions that are linked and that if you have any of them then you were more likely to have a 2nd the average person and if you had 2 you're more likely to have a 3rd etc. Though noone can explain why it's almost like they discovered a correlation between this group of conditions and then stopped all research into whether there is a causal link and or what any link might be.
I would love to see some proper research done into it and the way these things run in families, though if they did find an ASD gene I'm sure that the it's an identity brigade would be extremely put out

Dr Jessica Eccles is doing research into the link between hypermobility and neurodiversity .

@wtfisgoingonn thanks for this. That makes a lot more sense.

Is it about those with autism having MH issues due to their experiences in society etc?

In my anecdotal evidence of a small subset of 3 (diagnosed autism and mental health issues), this is my observation. One of those people struggled continually and eventually received ASC diagnosis on teens. Other two, diagnosed early. One has struggled continually, particularly in winter, and their world has become smaller and smaller as they avoid social demands to the point that they are now almost housebound.

The other is more unexpected. Unarguably severely autistic. Presents with severe learning difficulties. Pretty much impermeable to social demands to the point of being blissfully unaware. Then lockdown happened, coinciding with puberty, and all the things he loved doing got taken away from him for reasons he cannot understand. First there was rage like we had never seen from him before and then the occasional tics that punctuated his constant chatter snowballed to the point of being utterly debilitating. He is extremely anxious, these days.