lifeinlarkhall

Autistic.

I don't have a special interest in trains. I do enjoy the movement of them and other transport though. The movement is calming to me.

I do collect playlists on my special interests. My biggest special interest at the moment is Ireland 🇮🇪 🍀🥰

(sory this got really long 😅 )

Appreciate this response and I'm 100% on the same page about what you said. Question for you - was my response to the other commenter argumentative? I was trying to agree with them and expand on the point so if it came off differently I'd actually like to know that!

I agree in terms of teaching moments and having productive discussions about all of this stuff. It can be hard to not let the emotions get in the way sometimes when you're passionate (perhaps I did in my other comment? Definitely something I'm always working on!). I think that of all discussions, especially online it's too easy to have arguments rather than discussions and part of that is also recognizing who is worth engaging with and who is really just not going to be receptive no matter how respectfully you communicate. That's a hard part of these discussions online!

I absolutely agree about the disconnection - that's all very true to my personal experience and definitely on a wider scale. I work in the disability industry (also studied mental health and the people I work with often have comorbidities in mental health as many with disabilities do).

It's such a big conversation with so many moving parts; society, culture, financial, government, lived experience that ALL need to be involved in how we move forward if we want to see real change. Part of the struggle, I believe, is that there are a lot of people who may see change as an admittance of being wrong - which sometimes, yes it is. Sometimes it's been just being wilfully ignorant, sometimes it's been based on the available research, it's a sliding scale of errors. That acknowledgement that professionals make errors (not just in individual cases, including research limitations and the wider systemic issues) seems to be a really big barrier I see.

I believe acceptance is important - and complicated. I think of this in terms of lived experience. Briefly, I am autistic and was misdiagnosed for a long time with mental health issues and on the "conveyor belt" of the system for over 20 years. I have definitely held a lot of anger around my experiences that has lessened (not gone, definitely not no anger!) but I think my situation is not unique. There are many people with similar experiences and I believe that it would be both healing for us (and help with the acceptance) and extremely beneficial for professionals in the system for us all to work together. Again, for acknowledgement and to truly be open to how do we change things so future generations are getting the support that they need and the industry of healthcare is adjusting and innovating.

Anyway, it is a huge conversation and I could go on lol. I have not heard of this Soteria Paradigm - I will look that up now, thanks for sharing!

Lastly, I'm not sure about you but I'm not American. I'm Australian. I think this discussion is very much global and nowhere (that I know of!) has mental health, or wider, healthcare "right". There's a lot of progress to be made everywhere.

Yeah I've been surprised to see how many people have spoken about being banned recently for such minor stuff so I suspect that it might be pushing people on here. I wonder if they lose enough users they'll figure out their monopoly is under threat lol. But I think we're a very long way off that!

Tbh, I'm disabled and as sad it is, I'm quite isolated and a lot of my connection to others was through reddit discussions so I was actually pretty upset at the ban. So yeah the extreme IP ban is shit!

Yep my first diagnosis was 2004 and from that point I was on the conveyor belt, the lab rat, the guinea pig - exactly as you say. It's really quite awful to think about teenagers who labelled themselves as guinea pigs. I'm a writer and it's quite confronting to go over my teenage poetry and stories and realize how young I was and already describing myself as a science experiment, lab rat etc.

Seroquel is horrible. I am obviously biased, I am glad if it has helped anyone reading. Everyone I knew on it put on at minimum 20kgs. Imo, it's one that deserves a huge expose and discussion like adderal (or equivalent, we actually don't have adderal here!) has.

I think, in my experience, young males were labeled as ADHD and/ or just "bad" kids whereas young females were depressed/anxious/bipolar and a little later borderline personality disorder and/or just "bad" kids. (Can I ask if your experience fit this?)

So the misdiagnoses go wide sadly and whilst medication absolutely has its place I do think it's often too quickly prescribed. I think it should be the last resort, not the first! The shitty thing is that it's also seen as part of the process so, as far as I know, there's very little recourse to take around misdiagnosis for these kinds of conditions. Did you get any "justice" yourself?

My heart aches for us all honestly, who were diagnosed so young with any medical condition wrongly that has had long term effects. We deserved better and it's one of the reasons I advocate for the next generation to receive the support (not just diagnosis or medication) that will give them the best chance at a fulfilling life. I work in disability, sorry this is long, I'm passionate about these discussions! Take care of yourself!

Yep. I just got permabanned last week and for the most part don't care. But I had created a small sub that I miss ☹️ very niche, won't be able to do it again.

👋 I stopped using reddit last week.

Ditto. Had multiple accounts for anonymity and different algorithms lol. I was talking about a "murder suicide" true case and that got flagged as "threatening violence" and I got permanently banned 😅 jumped on a different account and...perma banned. And yep, instantly took out all 5 accounts 🤷‍♀️ hence why I'm here lol.

Tbh, women wouldn't admit to doing this either - there's absolutely a shame around women having to make friends with an AI (because we're meant to be innately social I guess). And I don't think that other women realize that they are contributing to the issues of women feeling shame using AI by implying it's a male issue and all about sex and toxic masculinity.

Like as a woman who has used AI, how am I supposed to feel about admitting that I've done something that only asshole, horny, incels do (according to a lot of people)?

So the stigma goes all ways and none of it helps anyone. People just need to be more curious than judgemental. Someone does something you don't understand? That's okay you don't understand. Ask them why. Listen. Try to see a different perspective instead of just filling in the gaps with incel, men, sex, ugly, etc. etc.

Psychiatry is in need of reform. But people need to stop targeting autism as the condition that gets over-diagnosed or misdiagnosed. All conditions are getting misdiagnosed and mistreated in certain cases. Focusing on just autism (and ADHD) is ignoring a huge part of the problem - which to your last point is that PSYCHIATRY needs reform - on all levels for all diagnoses and all the things you mention because there are so many issues.

It's just "easy" to reduce it to autism and ADHD are being over-diagnosed because big pharma. It's ignorant AF and peddling out the easy targeted rhetoric and misinformation only contributes to the issues that the whole health system has. It's not a 2D picture, you got to look at every side to get any inkling of the full picture.

You spoke about autism and bipolar. You don't get amphetamines for either.

No. It's actually really well documented why there's been an increase.

Previously women were seen as less likely to be autistic and often considered for other diagnoses without considering autism. This was also the case for POC.

Secondly, until 2014 ADHD and autism were exclusive diagnoses - if you had one you couldn't have the other. Now they have realized that they actually occur together naturally diagnoses for both have increased.

Asperger's is no longer diagnosed in a lot of places (only since around 2015, depending on location) therefore these diagnoses are now joining autism diagnosis numbers.

Access to healthcare, more education, more research than ever before and an ever increasing understanding that autism can occur with or without a low IQ.

Naught to do with insurance and everything to do with fantastic people who have done a lot of research to deepen the understanding of autism and include previously excluded people in a diagnosis that has no exclusions (any colour, any gender, any IQ level, any culture, any age).

Exactly. It's targeted. All medical conditions have some level of misdiagnosis. Mental illness and developmental disabilities. But people love to just zero in one diagnosis for this discussion which means it's targeted and there's an agenda behind it.

Nobody is getting an autism diagnosis to back up their comorbidities of depression and anxiety to get medication. If anything, people having a diagnosis of depression and anxiety is going to be a reason autism gets overlooked. If you want medication, you aren't going to go through an autism assessment (cost, time, stress, etc) and then be like "oh yeah you know how I'm autistic, don't you think that means I am depressed too? Pills please!" If that's your thing you'd just go for the depression.

Autism has zero benefit trying to obtain medication and actually is LESS likely to go straight for medication because if you're autistic then the first thing to do is make sure you're not overloading yourself and managing your sensory issues and such before even determining IF there's a reason to try drugs. Autisms first line of defense is environmental factors, self care, learning how to manage your energy and capacity, accommodations. The last resort is medication. Ffs I wish people would have a clue what they're talking about sometimes.