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Asked by anon-184204 to Lorna on 5 Nov 2018.
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Lorna Camus answered on 5 Nov 2018:
That’s a good question, and I’d not thought about it that way!
I don’t have any autistic people in my family, nor am I autistic. I guess I feel strongly about child welfare and mental health more generally, not just autism.
I have slowly learned more and more about autism, and feel like it’s a very misunderstood condition, which leads to autistic people experiencing mental health difficulties, social exclusion and so on, so I have become more passionate about it as I’ve learned more about it and heard about it from autistic people, if that makes sense!
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Comments
Nathan commented on :
As far as I know, none of my relatives have a diagnosis. However, I suspect on somewhere on the spectrum, and can see some traits in my parents. I discussed it with my GP who takes the view that it’s ‘excessive maleness’ (many autistic traits are also traits we associate with men) and suggests half the male population to somewhere on the spectrum. That is a view that exists, but isn’t proven or firmly established.
In critical psychology we have moved beyond ideas of whether models about the world are right or wrong – all models of the world are wrong because the world is complex. What is important is whether the a model (an understanding of the world) is useful (which often means, does it allows us to make predictions about the future, which in turn allows us to plan courses of action). A claim such what I just quoted about autism may well be ‘wrong,’ but it may also be a useful way to understand it.