Capping the number of children diagnosed with autism

[roundtable]

Did I just hear that correctly on the news? The couple of sentences that they gave about it before moving on.

I'm hoping I've misunderstood but wtf?

That is not reasonable.

So once we've limited the amount of people with autism, what group of people do they move onto next?

Did I hear it correctly and are they being completely unreasonable? Without a doubt

We waste a huge amount of money from taxes that could be better spent elsewhere and there is only so much to go round without raising taxes.

We can't have it all, low taxes, free healthcare for everything and anything and the freedom to make choices that someone else pays for. There are harsh decisions to be made all over not just this one area.

Sleepy is spot on.

Girls for instance can be very adept at masking and appearing to fit in. They will be able to fake it, as keen observers conditioned to be well behaved. May have friendships with younger children or boys. Under the mask they will be anxious and they will struggle as they get older and social sophistication of their peers makes their issues more obvious (dd didn't appear so different until she was 8 and then really struggled at school cried at break time could not maintain friendships or manage her school work).
My dd is more varied in her special interests than the 'average' boy with ASD, she is a serial adopter of special interests some quite singular (watching live Birth videos on YouTube obsessively when she was 6!), others very common for her age group Roblox, minecraft... The difference is the time she will dedicate to it, her inability to think about anything else and her distress if prevented from accessing her current interest.

Raise taxes. Either we all pay more now, or we all pay MUCH more in the furure- economically and socially.

I did wonder if I'd imagined this www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=/amp/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/38548567&ved=0ahUKEwjX-ojnipDUAhWHLsAKHdaLAbQQFghEMAM&usg=AFQjCNF-3nBbGaMgip25RrooOAiUmRMGSw&sig2=cC4OIS3fTdV0NiPikxonFQ
but no. Pledges on MH (No new money mind you) but at the same time undermining ASC diagnoses which we all know can lead to significant MH problems.

Sorry www.google.co.uk/amp/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/38548567
More sensible link.

People need to take their heads out of the sand and realise that the NHS is finished particularly if the Tories remain in power.

I have had a long, hard road to get my severely autistic dd an appropriate education which involved much of our own health and financial resources. And this started under a labour government. I am very glad she was born 15 years ago and not now....

@NotMyPenguin that's exactly the point isn't it. But they wouldn't suggest something like that with cancer (of course I'm not saying that should)

A large part of the problem is that commissioners still don't really understand what they are commissioning. Yes there have been cuts but sometimes commissioners have too much control and not enough training. I've sat with them while they've said "I'm sorry I've no idea what your service does".

This is a horrible terrible idea. As said by anyone with any experience or understanding of autism ever. I'd be surprised if anyone listened though

If they properly diagnosed autism in the first place there would be much less need to diagnose many other things that are often misdiagnosed in place of autism.

I suspect this is a result of years of professional fucks ups whereby we ended up with a culture which believed that autism "doesn't affect girls" As understanding has increased the system can't keep up with the number of people who need to be in it.

Stopping diagnosing isn't the answer though. We need to look at how to streamline the system to diagnose quicker and easier with less people needing to be involved. DD is in the system. I've had 6 appointments with 4 different people (over the space of almost a year) and we need to see at least 1 more different person before we even get a chance of a diagnosis. That doesn't even take into account the assessment panel we had to go through to get into the system. A friend who went through the system before me saw entirely different people in an entirely different order despite being in the same health authority. There seems no logical sense to how this stuff is done.

I'm horrified by this. My DD was diagnosed aspergers at 17. She had masked it brilliantly but always struggled socially, with loud and crowded places and concentration. The effort of coping with it caused serious anxiety and depression. Although there is no real help for her following diagnosis, understanding why she feels as she does is helping all of us. If they impose an arbitrary limit on diagnosing kids, it will mean even more problems with mental health.

As a woman with autism, I take some relief and comfort in the early deaths linked to autism as I do not enjoy my life. The world isn't made for people like me

User148
I have two boys who would be considered at the milder end (and to reiterate Rolling's comment, it's not fucking Nando's!). Neither are in school right now. Ds1 because his needs were utterly ignored, perhaps because he is undiagnosed, but in my area DC with "mild" ASD are not picked up well. Ds will not mix with others, he is so traumatised by his years at school that he cannot do any academic work, he has OCD. I have no idea what his future will look like, but had his ASD been identified at a younger age, and he'd been supported (even a little bit!), he may now have been doing GCSEs right now, and thinking about his future.
Ds2 is diagnosed, but because he looks "fine" his needs were also ignored until it was too late and could no longer cope. We are now looking at specialist schools which will cost the country far more than the little bit of support and understanding he needed, but, you know, he's only "mildly" autistic, so he's fine.

Just so you know, life with my two mildly autistic boys at the moment means 100% supervision of both unless I can take the younger out, then ds1 can relax a bit. We are at a stage at the moment where we can't have days out, as anxiety levels are too high, dh and I haven't been out together in over two years (and that only lasted an hour as we had to return early), we haven't had a proper holiday in ten years.
I'm not trying to be moany and woe is me, but life with mild autism is far beyond just something you can easily live with.
You made your point, but I strongly disagree with you.

Spotted this on fb just now

Is it part of making us 'strong and stable'?
It's a terrible idea. I have a friend who wasn't diagnosed with autism until adulthood and because of this has had next to no support or help.

I'm another one diagnosed at 37 after a lifetime of struggling with awful MH and a string of jobs where things went south - I can identify with feeling utterly useless and I still find it hard to understand what's going wrong when I simply cannot do something the way others seem to do. Some people in my life were disbelieving and others not at all surprised, but for me, knowing has meant I can start trying to finally accept myself and work on doing the best I can with what I have. I remember during my early teens wondering when I'd start to feel 'normal' and at the time I had no idea it just wasn't going to happen for me. Early intervention is essential for a good outcome and costs so much less in the long run.

generic that's a very good point. System is set up to deal with the eg expected 100 boy diagnoses, thinking that the 100 autistic girls alongside are just being melodramatic blah blah blah. So once autism in girls was properly recognised, they suddenly have to deal with 200 diagnoses instead.

It's a short term savings exercise, designed to bring caring back into the home, note, no longer the community. It's appalling in that it's not economically sustainable in the long term. Children with autism grow up to be adults with autism. Ignore the youtube videos that say there is a cure, that's for teenagers who hate being labelled like my son.

Also didn't mean to ignore girls with autism, but when it's prevalent, it's often dismissed as being a non specific disorder. I know this from personal experience. The young person in question is two years younger than my son and he has been officially diagnosed since the age of four, and this took 2 years. She had no chance and is now struggling as an almost teenager. Just awful.

Love that post Cloud. Say's it all really.

There really is no such thing as mild autism. To get a diagnosis you need to have demonstrably significant difficulties in everyday life. You don't, and shouldn't, get a diagnosis for being a bit quirky and socially inept.

Autistic people are autistic for life, not just for childhood. I can see why some parents think diagnosis is a waste of time when it leads to to zero support at school etc, but it really is better to be autistic with a diagnosis than autistic without a diagnosis.

What next?

"Oh we're not officially diagnosing diabetes...cutbacks you know."

I think better diagnosis of ASD, bipolar and other issues will result in fewer alcoholics, drug addicts and suicide attempts over the next few decades - but investing to save isn't the Government's way

Absolutely

Undiagnosed autism can be catastrophic. We already have higher than average rates of suicide and the constant anxiety, depression and alienation is very debilitating and leads to a lower quality of life and lower life expectancy. We also struggle to hold down jobs and lead a normal and functional life in many cases.

The people who are most likely to suffer from autism related mental illness are the higher functioning ones, the ones that they're now refusing to assess and diagnose.

Brilliant

Fuck Society

Polter I disagree about the mild autism. While officially undiagnosed dd's old school, new school, nursery, old slt, me and other family members with experience in childcare areas all have little doubt.

However I wouldn't say it causes her significant difficulties every day but that is because she has all the right support and strategies in place

RainbowsAndUnicorn Sat 27-May-17 13:26:22
"We waste a huge amount of money from taxes that could be better spent elsewhere and there is only so much to go round without raising taxes.

We can't have it all, low taxes, free healthcare for everything and anything and the freedom to make choices that someone else pays for. There are harsh decisions to be made all over not just this one area."

Not everybody insists on having it all. Some of us would be quite happy for a raise in taxes if it could enable us to invest as much into the health system as other European countries do.

Not to mention the savings that could be made if early intervention means fewer alcoholics and drug takers, less violence on the streets and fewer men with autism/MH issues in prison.

I recognise though that even with all the right stuff in place a lot of children with autism would still struggle. Hence me saying that in the scheme of things dd's is mild

Against with the right supports most autistic people will do well. It doesn't mean they're less autistic. Being officially undiagnosed isn't the same as being actually properly clinically diagnosed, where the difficulties across the diagnostic criteria have to be evidenced.