LGBT+ hitching their cause to autism and neurodiversity

[PostingForTheFirstTime]

Sorry, I don't know how to provide a token.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/lgbt-and-autism-project-postponed-after-ad-included-10-year-olds-hv68kkwgz

"The youth consultation project — called “Exploring Intersectionality” — was organised by Galway Autism Partnership and a volunteer group called Amach! LGBT Galway. It was funded under the LGBTI+ capacity building initiative by Tusla and the Department of Children and Youth Affairs.

The project documentation said it was aimed at promoting awareness within family support services of the issues faced by young people aged 10-24 who were autistic or neurodivergent and gay or trans."

The Times is reporting on it because the promotional literature advertised an age range 10 - 24, when the Galway Autism Partnership agreed to 16 - 24. It is being spun as a genuine mistake.

@Pookah83

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?

Why would you say moral failings? That seems to make for quite a narrow set of possibilities.

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.

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.

@Tibtom

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.

No, that's true, but we aren't talking about a small number of examples here. There are a lot, in fact maybe most, that don't present in consistent ways cross-culturally. And it's not ethnicity, it's culture.

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

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

@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

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.

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!

@Sickoffamilydrama

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!

If you catch toxoplasmosis then you are 5% more likely to be involved in a car accident.

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

@Sickoffamilydrama

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!

There are a few diseases, kidney disease I believe being one, that manifest sometimes looking like depression. But you have to treat the disease in the body to fix the problem.

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