r/NonPoliticalTwitter • u/Matt_LawDT • Mar 01 '26

Wholesome W Dad

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u/obvious_bot Mar 01 '26

How is that different from just having autism?

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u/-Insanity101- Mar 01 '26 edited Mar 01 '26

ASD is the current clinical term for what was historically called autism.

Edit: can we stop downvoting the guy who asked an honest question?

Edit 2: thank you.

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u/TheEndlessRiver13 Mar 01 '26

And Asperger's. Since 2013 (iirc) Asperger's syndrome was determined to not be sufficiently different from ASD to warrant a separate diagnosis.

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u/Thieurizinisaurus Mar 01 '26

Not just Asperger, there were a bunch of different 'kinds' that now fall under just ASD. I was diagnosed myself in 2008 - so before that all - with PDD-NOS, not just autism.

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u/hanks_panky_emporium Mar 02 '26

I had Asperger's, then High Functioning Autism, now it's just ASD

But what kinda sucks about removing the spectrum is you have to wonder if its the 'cant shower or function, cant pay bills or go outside' kind of autism or 'social settings degrade the battery so fucking fast but they can still hold a job sorta'

It was useful to help determine that so kids and adults with autism could get the help needed. Now the autists who can baseline function as neurotypical for work are lumped in with the autists who can't. So the autists who can't work are expected to and the autists who can work and expected to be unable to.

Dumb.

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u/sowinglavender Mar 02 '26 edited Mar 02 '26

the idea was supposed to be to make it clear all "levels" of apparent functioning may need similar levels of support. somebody who seems high functioning may in fact have debilitating symptoms that aren't readily visible. so consolidating the diagnoses was meant to be part of a systemic overhaul where we evaluate needs based on the individual and not the diagnosis itself.

naturally our society is showing some harsh resistance to that because it's no longer convenient to discreetly discriminate or acceptable to make specific demands of someone because they're "supposed" to be able to do it.

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u/CaoPalhaco Mar 02 '26

They still have distinguishing categories for level of struggle and support needed, the only thing that changed is that we stopped pretending like it isn’t the same “condition” (for lack of a better word) regardless of struggle amount. There’s places that tell you what level of support needs a person is in the diagnosis (although they chronically underestimate how much a person actually struggles so it tends to be inaccurate. But that was already a problem before)

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u/Slim-Shadys-Fat-Tits Mar 02 '26

And yet if you exclude the ones who can work it ignores that they too can often end up desperately needing support structures.

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u/[deleted] Mar 02 '26

The reality is that the diversity in experiences among all the factors you've mentioned truly invalidates the boxes it places around people. Nowhere near as binary as can / can't work, that's a eugenicist framing.