Explain to me why you offence is caused by saying things like 'mildly autistic' etc.

[Purpleturtle45]

If ASD is a spectrum why do people commonly disagree that you can be mildly autistic or severely autistic etc.

My daughter is diagnosed with ASD, however you wouldn't really know unless you knew her well. She goes to mainstream school and copes well with everyday life most of the time so to me I would say she is mildly autistic but I often see people getting ripped to shreds on here for using that term.

Genuinely wondering how 'spectrum' can literally be in the title of the condition but people disagree there can be different severities.

Researchers are increasingly clear that Autism isn't one condition at all, but probably several, maybe many, that all have a big overlap in symptoms. So we will probably see some big changes to diagnoses in the coming years.

I agree with what you’re saying mostly @Bluegreenhaze, but a person can also be mild in some areas of functioning (eg high iq, no speech issues) yet be unable to attend school or college, or work or marry or live independently.

I hope that does happen, I think it would be much more helpful to have several different diagnoses.

A lot of people with ‘mild’ autism can just mask really well… until they can’t and get burn out. First hormone drop was when my DC started to struggle.

My DD is also dyslexic and I’ve had that minimised with oh it’s only mild and well she can’t be really dyslexic as she can read. It’s ignorance. Her dyslexia does make life hard, she is slow to process, has problems with her working memory and cannot process audio instructions, but yes she can read fluently!

Yes it can be complicated. Categorisations are always going to be imperfect, but I don't think trying to describe it all as one condition as we do currently is helpful for anyone. Maybe it will end up being split into 3/4 different diagnoses.

If you bring back Asperger's you still have the issue of those of us who are in that massive in between. My diagnosis is ASC. I was diagnosed when Asperger's was still a diagnosis

But what if your child matures and finds an area they are really good at and then no employer will take him on because they were told that every person with autism has immense support needs and enormous difficulties, they are all exactly like a non-verbal, incontinent, below 70 IQ person in an electric adult buggy, even if they look different? I would really like my autistuc children to get a job, and I think they will be just fine, they'll have more grit and independent work ethic than most neuro typicals. They just won't attend the office Christmas party and wear a tie.

My son does have a job, and he is their most hardworking employee. But that doesn't mean it isn't hard for him. He simply cannot advocate for himself without it causing days of anxiety. Thus he gets taken advantage of.
That anxiety then presents itself in aggressive behaviour - not violent but angry. It causes him immense distress (and me as I bear the brunt of it through four hour telephone calls!)
What I am saying is that his autism isn't 'mild' to him - just to the observer.

If you are speaking for your child, that's OK. But you also arguing that autism can never be mild, and that there are no differences in support needs among people with autism. My children happily advocate for themselves and they are never violent. They need accommodations, but they know that it is their responsibility to look after themselves and they usually are able to do so. Please don't ruin their future by insisting that all autistic people are unable to function without external support.

I think in the US they use levels 1-3. One way or another it would be better to be able to make distinctions.
I think this is what previous posters were talking about, new research that has found 4 subtypes of autism. www.psychiatrist.com/news/new-autism-study-uncovers-four-biological-subtypes/

I was diagnosed as an adult (aged 35, 40 now) and largely manage to mask to the point of exhaustion, and like others in this thread of a similar age we were never given the option not to cope. I find it offensive that posters are asking about why I would see a diagnosis or how I could even get diagnosed without it having a significant impact on my life... well precisely because I have learned to live with it yet the difficulties it caused my in my younger years has left me suffering my entire life with significant anxiety and depression, suicide attempts, etc. The diagnosis validates that actually there was a reason for this and I wasn't just some weird kid who couldn't get on with others.

Unless you've been inside the head of a seemingly high functioning autistic person you have no idea what it's like. What you see on the surface is what we have perfectly crafted over the years as an outside persona.

I'm sorry that your son finds it hard. But those kinds of difficulties are milder, compared to severely autistic people's difficulties. Everything is relative. That's all that calling it mild autism is saying, not that it doesn't cause difficulties at all. Just like someone with a mild learning disability will struggle to understand things, but less so than someone with a moderate or severe learning disability. Or someone with mild cerebral palsy may find walking difficult, but someone with severe quadriplegic cerebral palsy will likely be unable to walk at all, or move their arms, and be reliant on full time care.

They are not 'milder' they are different.

I'm sorry but they are milder. Being able to work but finding it very hard and stressful, (which I do sympathise with as I find work very hard and stressful too), is obviously a much milder difficulty than being completely unable to ever work, not even understanding the concept of a job, needing to be cared for all day, every day for the rest of your life, being completely unable to do even the most basic self care, and so on (which is the situation my friends daughter, and many other autistic people are in). Sorry but it's pretty ignorant to suggest otherwise. Have you ever met someone who is severely autistic?

Thinking of autism in severity terms is simplistic. In the UK we don't generally describe autism level precisely because an autistic person's "functionality" is a lot more complex than being inherent.

For example, for the sake of argument two people are born identically autistic in terms of intellect, genes etc. One is born into a family of people who know very little about autism, who are loud and chaotic, enjoy spontaneous days out and treat the autistic person's distress as bad or wilful behaviour. The other is born into neurodivergent family who are quiet and bookish, who prefer to plan ahead and be fully prepared for days out and holidays, who have a good understanding of autism and go out of their way to accommodate the young person and adjust their expectations. Despite their "autism" theoretically being identical, their experiences, degrees of difficulty in their context etc are going to vary wildly. That's because autism HAS to be considered in context.

I guess it also depends on your definition of what is severe and what is mild. I think a pp tried to touch on that by saying if your child is "severely" autistic and nonverbal they are more likely to get their needs met. I think that was rather clumsily phrased but I think what the PP was trying to express is that distress and overwhelm happen when you, your environment, and the expectations on you are too far apart. This can happen to a preverbal autistic young person with intellectual disabilities in a care home, or it can happen to a highly intelligent young person at Oxford university. Who are we to decide that one autistic person's distress from the mismatch between their neurology and environment are "less bad" for the person at Oxford just because they are verbal and academic? When sadly it has not been especially uncommon that the distress has got so significant that autistic people have taken their own lives?

My own autistic adult child was a very happy and functional quirky child in a family where they were well understood, and would have been "level 1" autism in terms of functioning labels up to about age 11 or 12. When expectations in terms of workload, stress, puberty, the social and sensory environment began to outstrip their coping skills they began to struggle and need more support. At 17 they had a full on breakdown and spent 5 years in a darkened bedroom barely getting dressed more than once a week and being forced to wash once a fortnight. It was only when ALL expectations were greatly reduced except what they enjoyed and special interests that we began to make any progress. Now at 25 my DC can get a familiar bus home from a local group once a week, gets dressed most days, cleans their teeth, washes once a week on their own, puts their washing in the linen basket and their plates in the dishwasher, but is a lot less independent than my 14 year old. This is not "mild" autism. They are unable to work but this year we are hoping to begin two hours a week volunteering.

It depends on whether you think autism is mild if it doesn't enormously affect other people. Some autistic people have predictable needs (which doesn't mean they are easy to support and certainly very hard to manage as a parent) and others have needs which may fluctuate. To me severity or mildness of autism doesn't really work as a concept because it's context depend as well as person dependent, fluctuating or permanent, internalised or externalised.

So in a nutshell, yes I would be cross if my young person's autism was described as mild because it has certainly massively impacted them, even though they are verbal, intellectually able, knowledgeable, and not difficult to manage behaviourally.

I understand what you are trying to argue. But this suggestion that it is easier for the severely affected is quite distasteful. You are telling others that they don’t appreciate your son’s struggles as he is just ‘mild’. But at the same time minimising the struggles of others that objectively have worse situations. Furthermore it sounds like you may think these severely affected people might just be happy idiots when often they experience significant distress that they can neither understand nor cope with and manifests as severe self-injurious behaviour.

@Bluegreenhaze what about those autistic people tortured by severe mental health difficulties, those driven to the point of suicide? That’s not a mild condition by any stretch of the imagination. IQ is one measure of function imho, but there are others. You can have a combination of ID and severe MH issues too.

Some people on this thread have argued for a binary definition of autism and suggested low IQ (or learning disability) is a different additional diagnosis that explains what other people would consider severe autism. By the same logic you could argue that an additional diagnosis of anxiety, depression can be applied to these people really struggling in life but who only have what most would consider mild autism.

At the end of the day, most people realise the reality is complicated but we use mild and severe as easily understood shorthand. Some people choose to get upset by that. But it’s interesting that many autistic people on this thread are very comfortable to identify themselves as mildly autistic.

No, I don't think that at all.
But thank you for putting all those words in my mouth.
I said it to point out how upsetting it is to have difficulties trivialised as 'mild' when they are not 'mild' at all to the person with autism.

Some people on this thread have argued for a binary definition of autism and suggested low IQ (or learning disability) is a different additional diagnosis that explains what other people would consider severe autism. By the same logic you could argue that an additional diagnosis of anxiety, depression can be applied to these people really struggling in life but who only have what most would consider mild autism.

I don’t agree with separating out bits of a person’s brain like this iyswim. I don’t think a person has asd separate from their adhd separate from their dyslexia separate from their ocd or learning disability and so on. So I don’t agree with that logic. I don’t think you can do that.

I agree with you. Although in practice people do collect all these diagnostic labels when in reality they are likely all different manifestations of the same condition. Perhaps its part of human nature to need to classify things, but it’s feels quite arbitrary to do so for something as complex as … human nature.

It was a logical inference of these words that came out of your mouth (well keyboard really):

I'd counter argue that it is easier with 'severe' autism because the expectations of the individual to behave 'normally' are so much less.

We've autism in family. The way I see it - yes it is a spectrum, you may have traits but not a full diagnosis and yes you can be mildly autistic. It's not a binary, either/or condition - perhaps calling something 'mild' suggests there are variations and degrees within a category. Not sure why it would be offensive to point this out though.

We do this largely because it's how our health system has been able to develop support - categorizing symptoms and developing approaches to tackle them.

It's only really been with the surge in evidence based medicine and neuroscience that we're even starting to understand the genetic and physiological differences and processes that cause the issues and see that similar symptoms can have very different roots and might benefit from different approaches. As this research progresses we should expect to see massive changes in understanding, diagnosis and treatment.