research review

Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.

Today\’s article showcases an important step in living a happier life.  For everyone, really.  Everyone benefits from learning independence skills and having more control over their lives.  It\’s particularly relevant for autistic people, though, because we don\’t have the same opportunity to learn these skills.  

This article focuses on medical self-care skills.  Things like filling a prescription, scheduling a doctor\’s appointment, managing co-pays, and understanding insurance plans are stuff I had to more or less learn on the fly.  Even now, I\’m not honestly sure I have the latter one all figured out.  

Which is why the assessment proposed in the article would be so helpful.  Typically, you don\’t really know you lack these skills until the time comes to use them, by which point it\’s very \”sink or swim.\”  For people who don\’t typically thrive on improvisation, such as myself, this added challenge on top of all the other life challenges is not a kindness.  It\’s exhausting.  

I\’m pretty sure if I took the assessment, I\’d probably score low in the \”how to deal with law enforcement\” section.  Maybe average to above average in the rest, since I\’ve been on my own for a while.  All the same, I kind of wish I could take the assessment and whatever training might come with it.  Being an adult is shockingly complicated, especially when you factor in complicated medical needs and support services.  

The thing is, a lot of autistic people tend to lack confidence in our skills.  Myself included.  The world, and sometimes even our friends and family, spends a lot of time telling us that we\’re disabled and can\’t do things for ourselves.  Sometimes this is true.  Sometimes this is only temporarily true, and with practice and education we can manage things for ourselves.  

But we do have to be given the chance to try, and that\’s where a lot of the autism parents I\’ve run into struggle.  Making the transition from being Protector from All Harm to Square One is something done in stages, and requires trust, patience, and the willingness to let the person fail.  

Teaching self-management skills, such as these medical self-care skills, is one piece of that.  No matter how good a job you do protecting a person from the world, there will always come a time when you can\’t be there.  Doesn\’t it make sense to prepare them for it, rather than hiding from it as long as possible?  

(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn\’t get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)

Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.

Today\’s article has some interesting things to say about the diagnostic process, as well as autism diagnoses specifically.  This links to the full-text article, not a summary, so be warned.  

The intro to this study discusses includes the absurdity of psychiatric diagnoses, especially autism.  In the typical medical field, you collect the symptoms until you get a match.  Maybe you have to do a blood test, but there\’s typically a single, objective right answer.  

Unfortunately, we simply don\’t have that kind of broad knowledge about the brain and the mind.  Both are an order of magnitude more complex than most diseases.  So when you get to mental illnesses, or into developmental disorders like autism (not a disease, thank you), the diagnosis process becomes messy.  Instead of simple blood tests that produce a yes/no result, you get interviews full of subjective questions and subjective answers.  

The point of this study was to look into how clinicians handle this uncertainty.  Autism diagnosis is far more art than it is science, due to the truly absurd number of differences between individuals.  The diagnosis is barely useful in a medical setting, in my opinion, due to that fact… and a significant number of frustrated parents agree.  

Despite all that, there is pretty clearly something different about autistic people.  We simply don\’t have the terminology and coherence of data to describe it in medically useful ways.  (We do have commonality of experience, at least.  Which has led to a thriving community where autistic people help each other out, which is beautiful.)

The results were interesting.  Clinicians in this data set seem to simultaneously adhere to the medical concept (you are either autistic or not) and yet recognize and operate within the social concept as well (autism can be concealed or exaggerated via masking, gender norms, other medical or mental health conditions, acting, and poor reporting).  

There was also the recognition that a diagnosis opens doors to resources and supports.  This is particularly true in the US, where Medicaid may be your only hope of affording the appropriate services, like job training, in-home help, and transportation access.  It can be significantly safer to have the diagnosis in case you need it, rather than avoid it and be denied access.  

In the end, it kind of seems like the studied cases were more \”diagnosis by consensus\” than a doctor consulting the results of various tests and declaring the appropriate condition.  That\’s kind of a strange state of affairs, given the rest of medical history.  

It\’ll be interesting to see how diagnostic criteria evolve in the future, as we learn more about the brain and neurodiversity overall. Perhaps this \”diagnosis by consensus\” is merely a phase.  Or perhaps it\’ll always be that way when it comes to brain-related conditions.  Time will tell.

(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn\’t get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)

Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.

Today\’s article describes a path to improving existing mental healthcare.  Many autistic people suffer various forms of mental illness.  I personally have an anxiety disorder and a type of long-lasting, low grade depression called dysthymia.  

Longtime readers will recall I have various gripes with the US healthcare system and its accessibility.  But even when someone has insurance that covers mental healthcare, this paper points out quite clearly that the outcome is not always good.  

The summary has an example of a person being prescribed a particular pill and the fallout when the office failed to follow up with the person.  But as we found out a couple weeks back, this is pretty normal, especially when it comes to children.  

As a reminder, the best and most effective response to \”I seem to be suffering from mental illness\” is \”Okay, let\’s get you booked with a therapist.\”  The typical response from the system seems to be, \”Okay, here\’s some niche pills that might or might not help you.\” This study tells us that even if someone is prescribed appropriate medication, the chances of them receiving proper follow up care are minimal at best.  

Considering how frustratingly uncertain the results of pharmacological interventions (ie: pills) are, it\’s simultaneously terrifying and infuriating to know this is how things are.  Terrifying because the side effects of anti-depressants are many, varied, and sometimes crippling, and infuriating because of how systemic this utter failure is.  It\’s not just scattered bad doctors\’ offices that doesn\’t care about their patients.  It\’s basically every doctor\’s office, unless they are spectacularly on top of things.  

There\’s a great deal of need for jobs during (and after) this pandemic, and a great deal of hand-wringing about how to provide those jobs.  There are various ways to create those jobs, but in all honesty, some of them are more valuable than others.  There is a clear and pressing need, nationwide (if not worldwide) for better healthcare and outcomes.  So why not hire people to follow this research-proposed framework?  

Particularly, why not hire autistic people and other people with disabilities?  This kind of work can be done from home.  You\’d need database access and a work phone.  And the ability to ask scripted questions and listen to the answers, perhaps even ask some followup questions.  In short, this is not complicated work, and yet it would be highly valuable.  Why not?  We\’d all be better for it.  

(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn\’t get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)

Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.

Today\’s article describes a trend I\’m seeing more and more, especially during this pandemic: the tendency to turn parents into work-from-home therapists.

The need for services and therapists, I think we can all agree, is greater than the supply and availability.  

This is in part due to the ever-expanding numbers of people diagnosed with autism, but also includes geographical differences.  Rural areas, for example, are less likely to have a selection of speech and language pathologists with training to aid them in supporting an autistic youngster.  And of course, one must never forget the cost of these services.  This too serves as a barrier that keeps people from the supports they need.  

So all these barriers exist, but the need hardly disappears simply because the supply isn\’t there.  What then?  

Increasingly often, in this \”gig economy\” we now find ourselves in… the answer is \”fine, we parents will do it ourselves.\”  

At first glance, this sounds great.  There are training programs and apps and books that will attempt to teach you the philosophy and the actual mechanics of various types of therapy.  Then you don\’t have to shell out hundreds or thousands of dollars for that therapy, never mind transportation costs and the risk of viral infection.  

However, there\’s a few problems here.

First, adding the \”therapist\” hat to a parent puts an enormous amount of stress on that person.  Parents of autistic people tend to be pretty well stressed already due to our higher support needs.  So then, not only do these parents need to absorb an immense amount of knowledge, they also have to put it into practice and then go right back to parenting afterwards. Because the stress level is so high, more mistakes will be made, and the quality of the therapy will suffer.  Also, overstressed parents also don\’t do as good of a job parenting, because nobody performs their best when they\’re exhausted all the time.  

Second, the quality of these DIY resources varies widely.  While the insurance companies push Applied Behavioral Analysis as the One True Autism Therapy and many resources are available to teach those techniques, most autistic adults are firmly against it.  I was reasonably well-impressed with Floortime as a therapy, but practitioners are few and far between, never mind DIY resources.  

Finally, there\’s the cost in terms of time.  The time requirements for therapy are anything from an hour or two a day or \”40 hours a week, so forget cooking, cleaning, and time for yourself.\”  This is simply not possible for some parents, who already work a job or three simply to keep a roof and food in existence.  In some cases parents will band together and trade off duties so the others can have a moment to take care of their other children, or even, God forbid, have some well-deserved time to themselves.  This is difficult to set up at best, and practically impossible during the coronavirus pandemic.  

Is the whole idea of parental therapists utterly without value?  I don\’t think so, no. But I don\’t see it as an equal value alternative to professional therapists and services, regardless of how effective the training materials are.  

(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn\’t get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)

Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.

Today\’s article is interesting, but badly in need of a reality check.  

So, first thing.  What is a brain scan?  I\’m going to grossly simplify, because I presume you value your time and don\’t want to read a detailed breakdown of the difference between a PET, MRI, and fMRI scan.  

A brain scan is like an x-ray, but specifically for your brain.  Like an x-ray, it\’s a snapshot, more or less a picture at a point in time.  Where an x-ray shows your bones (and organs, if you know where to look)…

 a brain scan shows brain activity.  

A trained x-ray technician can look at the x-ray and see cracks in your ribs that explain why you\’ve been having chest pain, or a bulge in one of your spinal disks that explains your lower back pain.  

A trained fMRI technician can look at your brain scans, compare them to what little we know about \”normal brain function\” and note abnormalities.  

You might notice I\’ve used specific examples for x-rays, and air quotes and more dubious language for fMRIs.  That is very much on purpose.  The fMRI technique was invented in 1990, which you\’ll note was about 30 years ago.  The discovery of x-rays was in 1895.  In the grand scheme of technology, fMRI is a baby.  

A very promising baby, likely with a bright future ahead of it, mind.  But a baby all the same.  What it might become is unknown, and much of what it can do is theorized and speculated upon.  

What does this have to do with the article?  Well, here\’s the thing.  The researchers have tossed a thousand or so autistic brain scans at a computer (actually 14 different analysis models, but it\’s simpler to say \”a computer\”), and hope to have the computer not only be able to tell which brains are autistic, but explain how it came to that conclusion and present personalized prognoses.  That\’s actually a pretty small sample size for something like this, but it was the convenience sample- the database of these scans is open source and free for research purposes.

This is very much akin to taking that baby, handing them roller skates, and having full expectations of brilliant dance skating.  

That\’s not to say that brain scans can\’t be exceedingly helpful to psychiatry and even autism treatments in specific.  One of the problems is that autism itself isn\’t well-defined, and as such, any program looking for it is going to be subject to that ambiguity.  The study itself even acknowledge that the Related Work section.  We know there are some parts of the brain that are associated with autism, but there are many of them.  And with no subtypes of autism, saying \”this part affected this way means the person will have an increased chance for depression\” is just guesswork.

Even if you specifically define autism as only a set of brain differences, you still come out with a metric ton of those differences.  And they are not cookie-cutter.  You cannot slap 5 autistic brains side by side and expect there to be much by way of commonalities between them.  Grandin\’s book (review linked above) was pretty clear about that.

The real kicker?  Brains change.  Neuroplasticity is a long word that basically means dogs of any age can learn new tricks.  Connections between brain parts can strengthen or weaken (that is, in fact, how LENS works). Any given part of a person\’s brain might develop more strongly if their circumstances warrant it.  When I said brain scans are a snapshot, I quite literally meant it.  A brain scan is representative of the brain at the time it was taken.  It\’s silly to say we could give a long-term prognosis based on a single snapshot.  

The researchers here hoped that if they throw enough data at the computer, it\’d spit out something useful.  That\’s not entirely unprecedented.  But it\’s overly optimistic to say it\’d be conclusive.  The Results section is pretty dense, but the gist is that they discussed their results with the various models.  They weren\’t what the team were hoping for, but they remain hopeful.  

The TL;DR: brain scans are cool and very promising, but analysis of them is prone to human error.  Also, autism is not well-defined enough for this line of inquiry to yield good results.  Also also, if you\’re going to throw data at computers, you need a LOT of it.  A thousand or so pictures doesn\’t cut it.  

(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn\’t get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)

Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.

Today’s article is indicative of how badly the US healthcare system needs reforms.  There are a lot of failures in the supposed “best healthcare system in the world,” which we’ll discuss here.  The study focuses on mental illness in children.  The healthcare system affects autistic people quite a bit, and mental illness often goes hand-in-hand with developmental disabilities.  So, let’s begin.

First, this study was done entirely using the data of privately insured children with mental illnesses.  So, everyone they looked at had non-Medicaid or Medicare insurance.  This isn’t often the case for autistic people, because the cost of supports often goes well beyond most family incomes.  Restricting the study data lets us see trends we might otherwise miss, though, which is why it was done.

Second, many of the studied children were in areas with sufficient doctors to serve their needs.  In rural areas, this is not always the case, and one doctor may be the only doctor for 20 miles.  Since a human can only retain so much information and there are a great deal of ailments, medical and neurological, substandard care can result.  For this study, this lack was mainly not an issue either.

With both these facts in mind, let’s now look at what happened.  Each of the roughly 200k children had their first “I seem to be experiencing mental illness” doctor visit.  It is both appropriate and important that a follow-up appointment be made and treatment options discussed with the child and their parents.

…So naturally, about 30% of these children didn’t have that follow-up appointment.  Failure 1: just having a “yep that sure is mental illness” does not help the person cope with the condition or improve their life.  30% is on average by the way.  Some ZIP code areas were as bad as 50%.  So you literally had a coin toss’ chance to receive help.

Now, on to the content of those follow-up visits.  Our best understanding of how to start treating mental illnesses is that you begin with therapy.  Many insurances cover a certain number of appointments with a therapist, though not always.  I don’t personally think there should be a limit, but that’s all in the name of “not wasting healthcare on people that don’t need it” or something.  Spoiler: it’s better to have more than enough healthcare than too little, but because insurance companies are greedy, they make us opt for as little as possible.

Getting back to the follow-up visit.  In rare instances, when the child is doing extremely poorly, a combination of medication and therapy may be recommended rather than simply therapy.  So, naturally, guess what doctors mainly did at these follow-up visits?

Did you read the title?  Yep, it’s pills.  Just pills, sometimes pills with therapy.  Failure 2: throwing pills at it does not inherently fix anything.  And, in quick succession, Failure 3: the pills prescribed tended to be the kind that were less likely to work, and with harsher side effects.

What’s going on here?  Well, it’s likely a number of things.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, but only if your priority is actually health.  A lifetime prescription to an anti-depressant is much more reliable income than 4 years of therapy.  Or a year of neurofeedback or TMS.  The US system revolves around treating symptoms, not solving problems.

This is a systemic thing, not any one person’s fault, but we ourselves play into it.  Ads for this miracle drug or that pill are shown on TV, and people can decide they’ll only get better if they have it.  So people can go in for an appointment like this, and demand pills, and the doctor may see no apparent choice but to do as asked.  I don’t have statistics for how often this happens, but it’s much easier to pretend a pill will solve your mental health problems than do the work of processing traumas.  (It doesn’t work like that, but shhh, we’re treating symptoms over here!)

However, there is one major piece aside from this that you can look into yourself.  Your doctor is legally allowed (for some reason) to take money and gifts from private companies.  Those gifts are on record, and you can find them here on ProPublica.  Look up your doctor(s).  If they’ve taken money, look into why.  Corrupt doctors absolutely exist, and do not have your best interests at heart.  Choose a doctor that won’t sacrifice your health to make their wallets fatter.

If I had to guess, it\’s this latter problem that explains why it was just pills prescribed, and often the wrong pills at that.  I strongly suggest you take advantage of ProPublica’s work, and avoid doctors with priorities other than your health.

Regardless of the why, the results will be disastrous for these 200k children.  Untreated or mismanaged mental illness has lifelong effects.  They deserve better.  We all do.

(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn\’t get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)

Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.

Today\’s article puts the high health and welfare needs of autistic people into context.  It\’s fairly common for any given autistic person to have at least one condition besides the autism adding to the difficulty of their lives.  This study shows that\’s not only common, but pretty much to be expected.  This is true even after you account for the lifestyle conditions that would normally cause these issues, like smoking, drinking problems, and obesity.

The types of additional conditions vary widely.  Epilepsy, cerebral palsy, gut dysbiosis, muscular peculiarities, asthma, diabetes, heart conditions, and thyroid conditions are a small selection of the possible options.  No two autistic people are the same.  

This is true not only in terms of genetics, but also in terms of brain differences.  Autism, as I\’ve mentioned previously, is a trashbin diagnosis.  Vast swaths of deeply different humans are tossed into the diagnosis, which has no subtypes in the current diagnostic manual.  While any three autistic humans might have commonalities, there can also be deep differences in communication skills, executive functionality, and self-regulation skills.  

Autism is part and parcel of the brain.  Everything the brain touches is affected.  You\’ll note that effectively includes the entire body.  Movement is controlled by the brain.  Your ability to process sounds, emotions, and thoughts, is the brain.  The function and regulation of your internal organs is the brain.  

Depressingly for me in particular, biologically female autistic humans tend to suffer a much greater incidence rate of these conditions.  That trend is borne out in the adult autism groups I\’ve attended.  I myself count as overweight and have the beginnings of blood pressure issues as well as gut dysbiosis and various other issues.  Most autistic women or assigned-female-at-birth adults I\’ve met have had at least one complicating factor, sometimes significantly more.  

This study is an exploratory study.  It found no answers to the question of why autistic people have such high incidence rates of complicating conditions.  Its purpose was to establish the fact, and rule out the common causes for the fact, and that, it accomplished.  In the research article proper, the scientists toss out genetic risks, hormonal issues, increased use of drugs (no mention of pharmaceuticals, which… shouldn\’t those be included? They have side effects!), and lack of appropriate healthcare services.  

I\’ll be interested to see where this line of research goes.  Figuring out what\’s stacking the deck against autistic people\’s health, and how we can work to change it, would improve all our lives.  

(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn\’t get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)

Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.

Today\’s article points you to maybe the most important criterion there is for choosing a therapist: trust.  If you can\’t trust your therapist, you aren\’t going to be as open or truthful with them, and that limits their ability to help you and give you useful advice.  

This study is what\’s called a meta-analysis, which is what they call it when the researchers examine a whole bunch of existing studies around a single subject and look for patterns.  It\’s studying studies, effectively.  The hope with these kinds of studies is to find patterns in what works and what doesn\’t over a broad range of circumstances.  

In this case, they studied the therapeutic relationship between people and their mental health professionals, over 400 studies.  That is a truly staggering amount of reading and note-taking, by the way.  

They found, in the end, that the better the relationship between the therapist and patient, the better the therapy works.  This was true regardless of how severe the patient\’s condition was, whether the patient had done therapy before, and even what style of therapy was used.  

That last one is rather remarkable, to my mind.  Interpersonal synergy trumps technique.  

This might explain why it\’s so hard to find good help in the mental health field.  Not only do some folks not actually want therapy but are required to receive it, but also even if you want the help and find a skilled therapist, your personalities might not match.  

It\’s starting to taste a bit like the pharmaceutical medication roulette, quite frankly.  No wonder, \”I tried therapy, it didn\’t help\” is a trope in pop culture.  Like the medication roulette, if the first one doesn\’t work, try, try again.  

This has implications for parents trying to get therapists for their kids, by the way.  Especially if the kids are autistic and/or have communication challenges.  The parent might feel comfortable with a therapist, but if the kid doesn\’t, that therapist will not be a good use of money.  At least, if the aim is to help the kid thrive.  

There are some parents that make their kids go to therapy to try to cure of them of being LGBTQ+, which is A) pointless, and B) disgusting and damaging.  So at that point it\’s not about the kid\’s welfare, and I guess the money doesn\’t matter.  Please don\’t be those parents.  

My personal therapist wears many hats, but the reason I continue to give her money for years is not merely her vast quantities of expertise and resources.  It\’s because she knows how to be kind but direct about helping me through my problems.  She\’s had a lot of opportunity to get to know autistic people, and over time, me in particular.  So being factual and direct (without being rude) is a smart way to go.  That works well for me.

(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn\’t get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)

Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.

Today\’s article is an excellent reminder that sedentary lifestyles are toxic to the human mental state.  It also nearly started me off on a well-deserved angry rant, because that\’s what happens every time I see the phrase \”treatment-resistant depression.\”  

Let\’s start with that and then move along to the main point of the article, shall we?  (As a quick reminder, autistic people have very much higher than average rates of depression and anxiety.  Myself included, naturally.)

Ready?  Okay.  There is no \”treatment-resistant depression.\”  That is a bullshit category invented by ignorant derps wearing blinders.   What they actually mean when they say that idiotic phrase is \”depression that we can\’t medicate away after trying dozens of pharmaceuticals.\”

Did you spot the key word there, pharmaceuticals?  That\’s literally the only \”treatment\” people try.  If it doesn\’t respond to a barrage of pills (and God save you from the side effects of all those drugs), it must be untreatable!  

Wrong.

Wrong, wrong, wrong wrong WRONG.  Ughhhh.  

Hi, I\’m an autistic human with low grade depression.  It used to be a lot worse, and it used to dip into major depression when I was very stressed (like at finals time, or crunch time at work).  Then I did a few years of LENS (a type of neurofeedback), got help with my nutrition, became more active, and developed hobbies that involve being outside sometimes.  

Now I\’m doing significantly better and it\’s not because I took some fancy new drug.  It\’s because I stopped abusing my body, and as a result, it and my brain are doing better.

Can every case of depression be fixed 100% by changing these things?  Of course not.  Sometimes biochemistry does need intervention.  Sometimes that means a lifetime of pills.  Sometimes it just means you need that for a few months while you do the work to face the traumas causing the depression.  However, you can definitely improve your overall health, and that means your brain will do better, too.  The severity of the depression may lessen.  You may feel better overall.

And that is exactly what this study shows.  I tend to call it movement, rather than exercise, because you don\’t have to go jogging or do some kind of formal exercise.  I play a freaking video game for a half hour most days, go for a walk in the park with my spouse once a week, and go outside to forage for wild food whenever there\’s something in season.  

I do not \”go for a run\” or \”do this many of X exercise, this many Y exercise, that many Z exercise.\”  I don\’t go to the gym.  All of these things are valid ways to get movement into your life, but you honestly don\’t need to be that fancy.  Just going for a walk helps.  Especially if you can walk in a green space, like a local park or hiking trail.

My rant kind of bled into the main point here, which is that humans are animals.  If you trap an animal in a 5 by 5 space, feed it nutritionless garbage, and don\’t allow it to play or enjoy itself, it\’s going to be a miserable and sick.  If you wouldn\’t do that to an animal, don\’t do it to yourself, either.  

Because yeah, humans absolutely tend to do better when they get movement.  Maybe you won\’t qualify to lose the depression diagnosis, but wouldn\’t it be nice to feel better?

(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn\’t get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)

Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.

Today\’s article demonstrates a phenomenon I\’ve been seeing personally for years.  That is, the likelihood for autistic people to be found in the LGBTQIA+ group somewhere.  In the group of autistic adults I frequent, gender is typically a low priority topic.  While most of the adults typically at least present in line with their physical sex, it\’s typically just a matter of \”not weirding out the neurotypicals\” or personal preference.  

I put out a post some four years ago to try to explain trans people to a broad audience.  It holds up kind of okay still, although I\’m getting closer to simply saying, \”yeah, she/her is just kind of wrong when talking about me, please just say they/them.\”  I still identify as agender, and still think you should take your gender expectations of me and throw them out the nearest window.  Also, I learned recently that dysphoria is for everyone, myself included, so that\’s fun.  

The researchers seem to be puzzled as to why autistic people would be so much less likely to subscribe to the traditional \”two genders\” system.  I\’m honestly puzzled as to why they\’d be puzzled.  Autistic people march to our own beats in a lot of ways.  Why would gender be any different?  Society shapes and molds biologically male and female humans toward having a matching gender, it\’s true…  But if you\’re deaf to that guidance, as you\’re deaf to every other kind of social learning, of course you aren\’t going to perfectly match the societal \”ideal.\”  

In some cases, like myself, you may entirely reject it.  It\’s just another box people want to wrongfully stuff you into, after all.  I\’ve got enough expectations on me without people demanding I wear dresses and makeup, or enjoy clothes, interior decorating, pink, and whatever else passes as feminine these days.  If other people like those things, more power to them.  I simply don\’t, and resent the expectations that I should.  

On a final note, it\’s refreshing to see Professor Baron-Cohen saying things I agree with.  I\’ve typically disagreed with him on a lot of points.  However, improving the lives of transgender and gender-diverse people is a cause I can definitely support, and doing so will help autistic and non-autistic people.  

(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn\’t get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)