Thursday, February 12, 2009

I Don't Think Anyone Understands Autism

Jenny was just diagnosed autistic last week. Honestly, it doesn't mean a whole lot to us, except that she gets to go to preschool now. She barely meets the qualifications for autism.

I have been reading up a bit on autism lately, and a news article just happened to pop up that I found rather interesting. There's a belief out there that autism is being caused by vaccines (there's also some that believe it's caused by the way our food is processed).

Now, I'm not the only person who thinks that autism is pretty closely related to ADHD (I was diagnosed with adult ADHD about 6 months ago). They seem pretty similar to me.

Anyway, I have a theory on why we're seeing it more than we used to. I think it's just that. We're seeing it more. It's not that it is happening more, it's just that it's diagnosed more. No one said I was ADHD when I was a kid, they just said I was really active. It wasn't until recently (after a head injury that seems to have made it worse) that I even worried about it. I tend to think that a lot of people I knew growing up would have been diagnosed autistic if they were kids now.

I also have a problem with calling anything of the sort a disorder, but that's another rant for another day perhaps.

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