The dots are being joined regarding Autism in Girls and mental health disorders

[louiseaaa]

Just that...

Anorexia so far, but the parallels with ROGD are there to see

"Will Mandy, a leading autism researcher, from University College London, said part of the issue was that women and girls were much less likely than men to be recognised as having autism in the first place.

And he believes that the "high levels of stress and anxiety" caused by the condition going undiagnosed in childhood and adolescence can contribute to people experiencing severe mental health conditions, such as eating disorders."

Link here : www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-47359416

Away of exerting some degree of control over a confusing and uncontrollable world.

Good.

I've met many young boys who do the same either through similar reactions or due to sensory issues around eating. But all diagnosed with autism first.

I was going to post this as well.

The interesting thing for me is, yes, they are joining the dots, but only between autism and anorexia.

And there exists no lobbyists from anorexia charities seeking to ban any research into such links.

Don't forget that the National Autistic Society was subject to a full-on assault by TRAs over attempts to remove links to Mermaids.

Anorexia & autism - "autism may be linked to anorexia, we need to address this to reduce the number of autistic children suffering from anorexia" - everyone agrees

Transgender & autism - "autistic people know their own minds, we need to get them on the transgender pathway as soon as possible" - twitter.com/mimmymum/status/1063995666509250560

It's all linked with the rather contorted thinking of on the one hand trying to claim that gender dysphoria is not a mental illness, yet simultaneously arguing that double mastectomy, 'bottom surgery' and all the rest are 'medical treatment'.

And also the absurd argument that identifying as the opposite gender from your biological sex is somehow a neutral choice, even though it is likely to lead to a lifetime of drugs, infertility, radical body modification surgery and so on.

IF gender dysphoria just meant that a girl cuts her hair short and wears trousers then that would be fine. But instead the current status quo is that it is necessary to cancel puberty for children at age 11 or 12 and then ultimately in nearly all cases dose them with sex steroids leaving them infertile and quite possibly without sexual feeling as well.

Very clearly this is not a good pathway to go down if even a significant minority would later desist. And we KNOW that many would desist.

It's only by countenancing the violent rhetoric, the aggressive 'no-platforming'/'no-debate' as discussed here twitter.com/ollylambert/status/1100693458048770048 as if by the act of questioning whether this is a good idea at all we are literally murdering transpeople, that we have ended up in this mess.

How on earth did we get from 'woman becomes first in UK to dose her child on oestrogen and then sets (Western) world record for youngest ever sex change surgery' to 'this is settled and 100% scientifically proven and anyone who disagree is an evil Nazi bigot who must not be allowed to speak'? It's fucked up.

That's very interesting!

Just read that twitter thread. They are comparing Olly to Hitler.
Batshit

The other huge factor is because autistic kids don't pick up on any of the social stuff including social norms as much as neurologically typical kids, many are less gender conforming .

Several friends with autistic kids have told me recently that their kid went through a phase of wanting to be or identifying with the opposite sex. All desisted after a while.

Its in plain sight what is happening to some autistic kids. Increased by the desperation to fit in socially means they can be suggestible and led.

Do I have to start another thread to talk about the possible link between autism and anorexia (and my own fears about this) without having to wade through gender talk? 🙄

If you want a general talk about autism and anorexia without having a woman's rights discussion I would suggest starting a thread in the SNCHAT or Mental health sections of the site.
Feminism seems to slant towards woman's rights, funny that.

I'd like to talk about women's rights too. Notably those with anorexia and autism.

Funny how every discussion on the feminist board has to be about gender nowadays. I'd like just to talk about autism in girls and anorexia in girls which are women's issues and women's rights issues.

I was so heartened by the title and the "just that" in the initial post 😔 But sadly, posters on here are just excluding other female posters by turning everything to this one topic, however tenuous. Rather ironic; excluding other women's voices.

I will have to hide this topic again so it doesn't pop up in active and get me all excited about talking about something interesting.

I saw the article and found it interesting. But it really does beg the question about just how widespread is autism in girls (undiagnosed) which is then manifesting in various kinds of self harm.

Okay, I look forward to you post in special needs chat, as you are so desperate for that discussion.

Understanding how autism influences behaviours must be so important with treating anorexia.

tenuous

35% of those referred to the travistock clinic are autistic, this is not tenuous.

My kid is textbook in this regard. We had no clue that she was autistic until everything started to fall apart at about aged 17. Then came depression, self harm and declaration of being transgender. The autism diagnosis came after that.

If she had been diagnosed earlier (instead of OCD, GAD etc, just "highly strung") she would have had support from us, from school, from mental health professionals etc to understand why she wasn't coping )and still isn't actually).

So it is a feminist issue - girls are being let down by a diagnostic system based on male presentation.

And the consequences are huge - anorexia, self harm, surgical alteration to "correct" your body.

(That's not to say autistic boys aren't also affected)

Dd 16 has autism diagnosed age 2 and ROGD I believe it's because she doesn't identify with her female peers because of the autism and so her automatic assumption is that she must be the wrong gender. It's incredibly worrying for me especially as she seems to have found a group of like minded and interestingly also ASD friends online which seems to be cementing her belief and she increasingly sees me as transphobic for refusing to countenance her beliefs.

I would think both anorexia and gender dysphoria are important autistic womens' issues.. not sure why somebody would have to go into a different forum to discuss. If you don't want to discuss gender dysphoria then just contribute about anorexia and also people's opinions about that? I know lots of autistic women with sensory issues relating to food are misdiagnosed anorexic, too - happened to a couple of friends of mine. They don't eat enough but it doesn't relate to wanting not to be far which is what a lot of the treatment is based around. So I fear that undiagnosed autistic girls might be receiving the wrong sort of treatment to resolve their eating problems e.g. standard anorexia treatment which misunderstands he root of the issues.

*wanting not to be fat

Yes dd hardly eats either, she has a restricted diet anyway which is common in ASD but also she doesn't necessarily recognise the cues that she is hungry. So yesterday she ate a small bacon roll and today she has eaten the same and refused everything else offered. This may continue for a few days and then she will move on to a different food and possibly more than one meal a day.

I don't know why people feel the need to come here with the 'no debate'-type shit. Nobody is shutting down discussion of anorexia. Posters who have things to say about anorexia and autism should say them. And the OP was already quite clearly broadly constructed to include mental health conditions generally NOT only anorexia. Theres nothing stopping another thread specifically about your experiences with anorexia

That is to Greyroses

GreyRoses - either post what you want to say on here or start a new thread if you think that your post will get lost. Either way, it's definitely an interesting issue to pull apart and think about through a feminist prism

My dd is 15 and has Aspergers. She too seems to have gone down the ROGD route. She has struggled to find her "place" in Secondary school and puberty rang the death knell. We have had LONG conversations about this (after she had been watching YouTube and asked for puberty blockers) and for the moment she is being non-binary which is fine with me.

My background is in SEN and welfare in FE - I'm really interested in this as I've dealt with students self harming in various ways and I see that the overall issues that students present with and with the late diagnosis of male and female students with various additional learning differences/needs. A lot of them initially present with behaviour and social issues so I found this report interesting. Anything that would help me approach a young person holistically, rather than a set of symptoms should be shared, which was why I did that.

I have a child who also had a late (though not that late) ALD diagnosis and they presented with GAD and were referred to CAHMS who tossed them back to the peads like a hot potato.

I know anecdata isn't proof but this report seemed to back up my personal observations

Finally, for those lurking with intent - there's no point in doxxing me - I no longer work directly in FE

In my experience, similar to yours but much younger children, observations count for an awful lot. It's anecdata but everyone working daily with these young people know what's going on.

Morskie - re non-binary - in my experience, girls who identify as non-binary still seem to end up with a double mastectomy and on testosterone - it is not simply a "neutral" option - which it should be.