I’ve been noticing a new trend as of late – and frankly I find it a bit disturbing. There is a large amount of people on Aspergers support forums who claim to have Aspergers but really may not – they are self diagnosed. While some of these people may in fact have Aspergers, there is no doubt some of these people claim to have Aspergers as its the new emo – in other words a way to claim to be different than everyone else.Many of the people on the Autism and Asperger support websites are there legitimately seeking support for a diagnosed condition, this used to be a really useful tool for seeking support but as of late its been all but helpful. If you look on support websites such as Wrongplanet you notice what was intended as a support website is all but a support website, people with a legitimate and diagnosed condition are often trolled and harassed by those who claim to be self-diagnosed.
Self diagnosis in itself is a inaccurate and possibly dangerous thing. Doctors never recommend self diagnosing people for one reason – people are not good at evaluating their own conditions and they often tend to think the worse possible. Also Aspergers is often mis-diagnosed by professionals as other conditions which can be treated – but if not can result in violent and deadly behaviors, depression and even suicide.
I have yet to see any of the larger people in the Autism and Aspergers advocacy movement address the rise in self-diagnosis. This is most likely due to it being a tense issue, however would like to hear some opinions from people on this.
WARNING: Opinions are not attacks, as this is a tense issue I want oppinions on the issue at hand, not oppinions on me or other commentors – They will be deleted!
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Another thing, shouldn’t a good spectrum always have “normal” in the middle? Everything is best in moderation. Take any symptom and completely reverse it and you’ll have just as troubling a symptom. The opposite of rigid routines and rituals is an inability to form routines at all. The opposite of low social awareness is high social awareness and even though that seems like there would be no drawbacks if it was to the point where every second of your day your mind is completely aware of even the smallest of details in people’s expressions speech and mannerisms it would be unnerving. Things most people suppress out of other people’s social expressions for the sake of their emotional well-being such as suppressing awareness of a tone in someone’s voice showing a highly negative and disapproving attitude towards you would not just be noticed it would be overwhelming and next to impossible to move on after noticing it. Just like there are no senses people enjoy being oversensitive to(there is always a point where it is too much of a good thing) the person would hate socializing and would probably withdraw socially and keep to themselves. In fact since people aren’t completely aware of the social messages they’re putting out the person would probably read in to social signals too much leading the person into paranoia.
And interesting thing is that NMDA antagonists such as DXM in low doses are shown to cause heightened social awareness, more decisive(robotripping is sometimes described as going on autopilot) behavior, less ability to form memories (Aspies often have great memory), and less awareness of the phyiscal senses. At high enough doses the effects of these drugs causes hallucinations from sensory deprivation because you are that desensitized to the world around you. These mental states have been compared to schizophrenia. Ketamine, one of the drugs at high enough doses can cause a “K Hole” experience which is similar to severe schizophrenia and has a variable reintegration process where the person thinks and acts like they are in a different state of schizophrenia. One man was even wearing a wedding dress and gluing flies to his face for 9 whole months after his K Hole experience.
I heard about a severely autistic woman who was under care as an adult and accidentally ingested too much DXM cough syrup and while she normally kept to herself and rarely ever spoke, she was friendly for awhile under the influence of DXM.
NMDA receptors are also important in learning, more active receptors generally leads to higher IQ which might explain why Aspies are so smart. But on the other hand many schizophrenics have high IQs, take what’s his name the guy who won the Nobel Prize. Still NMDA is not the only factor in intelligence and NMDA antagonists do sometimes help people think of things in different more creative ways(opposite of the thought processes that would lead someone to be highly organized and develop a rigid routine, and also schizophrenics do tend towards more creative thinking), by dissociating aspects of the mind from each other the person becomes more aware of the inner workings of their subconscious, its not hard to think how taken to an extreme this understanding of the subconscious could blur the lines between imagination and reality. People even philosophers have gone insane just off of thinking too much about their subconscious and about how it ties in with the nature of reality. People question their very existance, whether the world is actually real, it can get pretty crazy.
Taking all this into consideration schizophrenia may be the other side of the spectrum(s) and the NMDA receptors might be the key to understanding both autistic disorders and schizophrenic disorders.
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Spectrums are 1-dimensional and its not a 1-dimensional disorder. It would make sense to use a single spectrum if everyone’s severity for one symptom was directly proportional to all their other symptoms but that’s not true. Shouldn’t we use several spectrums instead of just one?
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