Comments on: Autism and diagnostic substitution

By: Opal Wallbank

Opal Wallbank — Sun, 16 May 2010 05:39:10 +0000

Such a great post! I’m so glad you thought to publish it.

By: Ronnie Jasmer

Ronnie Jasmer — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 14:50:09 +0000

what a incredible submit, wow.

By: West Los Angeles Chiropractor

West Los Angeles Chiropractor — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 19:16:59 +0000

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By: Upendraya

Upendraya — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 13:42:29 +0000

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By: Uncle Dave

Uncle Dave — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 22:10:46 +0000

Mary said;

“On my mother’s side of the family, there were several sets of uncles who needed an unusual amount of order and precision in their daily routines and could not bring themselves to attend any of the frequent social gatherings of their tremendously gregarious kin. Some of the uncles grew vegetables for the family and had very little interaction with them but exchanged for living space, laundry etc. Others of them were metal or wood workers and were able to go out to work although not participating much in the banter there. They had workshop space at home and worked in them endlessly. They read voraciously on a narrow range of topics and had astonishing recall for detail.”

This is something that predominates many of the background investigations
with parents whom have autistic children in special education programs.

Upon further investigation you find that there is often a family
history like the one you have stated, (mostly male) of an uncle or other relative that
was, lets just say unusual.

Thanks for the link to Autism Diva.

By: Uncle Dave

Uncle Dave — Fri, 23 May 2008 15:00:08 +0000

“…it only applies to one small class of diagnostic substitutions — those pertaining to developmental language disorders. Professor Bishop and her co-authors have also argued that caution should be used to interpret the results because the parents’ recall of their children’s past behavior could be affected by time or by information on autism they’ve picked up.
Absolutely true. On the other hand, recall bias will always be a problem in these kinds of studies, if parents are asked to fill out questionnnaires about their adult children’s childhood behaviors.”

Not just recall bias, but just plain bias as to thier childs behavior issues even
at the time of study. Often most parents are quite honest about behaviors and
or developmental status to a clinician, however that is not always the case
when judging severity (when they exchange information with a teacher it is
often times very biased do to parental objectivity issues).

By: Mary

Mary — Fri, 23 May 2008 10:45:25 +0000

I am fascinated when people talk about whether autism existed before the label existed (so to speak) and the plausibility of diagnostic substitution.

There are so many folklore tales and even artwork of the Changeling character, in which children changed overnight at very young ages.

On my mother’s side of the family, there were several sets of uncles who needed an unusual amount of order and precision in their daily routines and could not bring themselves to attend any of the frequent social gatherings of their tremendously gregarious kin. Some of the uncles grew vegetables for the family and had very little interaction with them but exchanged for living space, laundry etc. Others of them were metal or wood workers and were able to go out to work although not participating much in the banter there. They had workshop space at home and worked in them endlessly. They read voraciously on a narrow range of topics and had astonishing recall for detail.

For a variety of reasons, some people ended up in institutional care. Autism Diva had a very fine post on Where’s Molly? Where are the others

There’s a timeline that explains that in 1967 about 195,000 people, half of whom were children were institutionalized for being disabled, many of them would have been diagnosable as autistic by today’s standards. Many of [them] were treated brutally and died in those institutions of the actions of drugs and of neglect and disease.