Rethinking the Definition of Autism and Aspergers

By Elise Ronan – The Times of Israel - Elise is the parent of two youngmen on the autism spectrum. She has been a volunteer special education advocate in …

Once again we have a mass murder and once again the media-whores are trying to blame it on aspergers, guns, misogyny and “white privilege.” When the reality is that the issue is mental illness and how it is treated, or not treated, in the United States. The family was fast to let the world know that their sociopath-narcissistic-highly disturbed-son had been diagnosed with aspergers. Not certain why that is even relevant. It is not that this family didn’t try to get the authorities involved. They actually alerted the police, who instead of searching his apartment or trying to get him involuntarily committed, found this murderer charming. Overly charming, by the way, is how most would describe every sociopath. Yet the question becomes, what is the point of letting everyone know about the autism diagnosis?

Yes, aspergers is the diagnosis of the moment. When doctors can’t figure out what category their patients fit into, they reach for something that is all encompassing. It just so happens that this decades all encompassing mental health diagnosis is aspergers. Before that it was ADD. Before that…who knows, but it was something. The problem too, is that psychiatry is a science that is not necessarily quantifiable in the same sense that something physical is quantifiable. Psychiatric definitions and understanding change as society changes. The “powers that be” in the psychiatric community consistently alter their view of what is a mental health disorder, and constantly change their opinion on what is, and is not, a cause for mental health concerns.

An additional problem that you have in the community is that so many of these book-learned people have never really dealt with autism or aspergers. They only read a book; took a class; heard a lecture. But they have no real experience in dealing with anyone with autism. A lot of times they simply look into the DSM and pick out something that sounds good and may be applicable to the situation at hand, something they simply cannot define for certain at the moment. That is exactly what happened with the boys when we visited one particular therapist.

Even though they had been given the dx of aspergers, when this particular therapist filled out his forms for insurance, he went into the DSM and looked for the dx that listed what he thought was more applicable to the boys. I argued with him that they had a relevant diagnosis that was appropriate. But he decided he knew better because as he pointed out to me, the DSM listed 4 applicable characteristics of “autism” instead of aspergers, which as far as he decided was more appropriate to the boys. He had never actually worked with, or had experience with, anyone with autism or aspergers. We went to him because he was used to working with adolescent males and highly recommended for that purpose. I had not realized until that moment that there really was a huge difference in approach when dealing with adolescent aspergeans and NTs.

Yes; we ended up leaving that therapist, but not because of this difference of opinion. When my younger son was having trouble with his 5th grade special ed teacher, instead of defending my son, he supported the teacher. Instead of coming up with some relevant classroom procedures that needed to be put into practice for my son, or relevant organizational skills that he had to learn, and that the teacher had to work on, this therapist decided that the teacher couldn’t be incompetent. The fact that he was having issues according to this therapist, had to mean that my son needed some heavy medication like risperdal or even an even stronger antipsychotic. (FYI- I am not against medication. I am against unnecessarily medicating.) According to this therapist there was no way that the teacher could be a gross incompetent,even though he had never met her, spoke with her or interacted with her on any level. Someone who is incapable of seeing the failings of another “professional,” is not someone you want working with your child.

As a note: I had not been told by the school district that this particular special ed teacher had been informed earlier in the year that she was not receiving tenure due to not meeting teaching standards. So she not only didn’t do her job vis-a-vis my son for the year,  but his entire class. (He was a fully included student with special support. And because the support was inadequate the entire class suffered.) In fact, she actually lost my son one day as well and tried to blame it on other people. The district did force her to go on medical leave half way through the year and put in a substitute, which helped the situation greatly. But unfortunately he had already been set back tremendously in his development. It took years and some very hands-on competent teachers to bring him back into the groove.

Meanwhile, I have been having a change of mind. The fact that the definition of autism/aspergers has been reworked by the DSM may not in the long run be entirely bad. I know that the aspergers community is very angry and there are psychiatrists who are unhappy about the methodology used to decide upon these new criteria. But perhaps when it is harder to diagnose someone with aspergers/autism, therapists and psychiatrists will actually have to figure out what is truly going on with a patient and not just decide that everyone with social issues must have aspergers/autism.

Autism is not simply about someone not understanding social issues. Autism is an entirely different brain wiring- a different operating system so to speak. It means that people see the world differently and interact with the world differently than an NT. It means they learn differently and work differently. It means they are able to think outside the limited box that the world has set up for itself. Autism does not mean that those with the dx are sociopathic, psychotic, violent or devoid of the ability to function within society on a healthy basis. These are all very different mental health issues. Quite frankly no, every sociopath is not an aspergean and every aspergean is not a sociopath. In fact one has nothing to do with the other.

The problem that you face is that the psychiatric community has made a habit of giving our children a list of dxes. These co-morbid issues are what cause the problems in society. While our children may have aspergers, they can also have OCD, anxiety, ADD, bi-polar, schizophrenia and (sadly) may even be a sociopath. But premeditated violent tendencies associated with the most extreme forms of these mental health issues have nothing to do with autism. They have to do with the comorbid issues. In fact, most of these co-morbid issues also do not result in violence or outward aggression either.

The interesting issue is whether under the new DSM definition would any of those with the most severest form of mental health issues even have a comorbid dx of any kind of autism? Would the psychiatric community be forced to actually reevaluate their patients to ensure that there is a real review of what is going on with their patients instead of dumping them into the mental health issue of the moment? Will there be more oversight and more accountability of the psychiatric profession instead of the media and society going  “autism” monster hunting?

Frighteningly, we have to be ever vigilant that the “witch-hunters” do not once again try to come after our children because of the reporting by an irresponsible media, police inaction and the psychiatrists who did nothing to stop a murderous rampage. My boys have no problem with telling everyone they have aspergers. They are proud of who they are. The problem is, that society’s ignorance about mental health and autism causes others to have problems with them, and it is this lack of societal education that is the real threat to their future.

A version of this blog post originally appeared in Raising Asperger’s Kids

More in this blog

• Mental Health Awareness: Wanted Compassion and Understanding
• To the Jewish-American Community: What is wrong with you?
• Yom Hashoah, the 3-D Test and Those with Special Needs
• The Season of Freedom and Special Needs Parenting
• April is World Autism Awareness Month: Heck, We are Autism Awareness

Technorati Tags: Austism,Asperger's,Autism-Warrior-Parent,Awareness,Guns,Misogyny,Mental Illness,“White Privilege”,Shootings

Gun Advocates Celebrate 'Secret' Obamacare Provision Forbidding Exec Order To Regulate Guns And Ammo

Forbes -  Cross-Posted at AskMarion: A shot heard ’round the blogosphere, Vice President Joe Biden’s suggestion that the administration might bypass Congressional participation to regulate guns in favor of using the executive order produced the inevitable choirs of “I told ya so” as Biden’s sound bite appeared to provide the proof that Obama was, indeed, coming for your guns.

But this time, the gun advocates were ready with more than just angry recriminations.

Acting with an assist from CNN, right-wing bloggers and gun advocates in the know, let loose with a tidbit of information they have, no doubt, been long chomping at the bit to unleash—the revelation that there is already a law on the books that would prevent the government from making good on Biden’s tantalizing suggestion, a law that would actually prevent the government from collecting data on firearm ownership and more.

And what might that law be?

Obamacare…

That’s right—it turns out that there is, indeed, a provision buried deep in the thousands of pages that is the Affordable Care Act entitled, “Protection of Second Amendment Rights”. You’ll find it in Section 2716 part c of the Affordable Care Act although, to save you the trouble, I have re-printed the provision below for your perusal.

Certainly, one strains to imagine how anything touching on gun ownership, the Second Amendment, etc. could find its way into a health care reform bill just as it confounds the imagination to contemplate who might have been responsible for adding such a clause in the first place. Obamacare is, after all, primarily the creation of a President who gun advocates have long believed is out to strip them of their firearms—not to mention a law written, supported and passed by those in Congress identified as coming from the “far left” of the political spectrum under the leadership of Nancy Pelosi.

So, how did such a strange provision find its way into health care reform?

You might be surprised to learn that the language was offered in a Senate amendment proposed by none other than Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid. While this news may come as a shock to those who view Reid as a leader of the left, politics will always trump ideology and—in the State of Nevada—politics dictates that running for office as a gun supporter is a way better idea than seeking office as a gun regulator. So, it should shock nobody that Senator Reid is a long-time gun rights advocate who has consistently counted upon the support of the NRA when running for election in his home state.

As for Reid’s reasons for burying a pro-gun measure into the body of the Affordable Care Act, the Majority Leader is said to have been concerned that the NRA planned to take an active position against the passage of Obamacare and decided, no doubt with the permission of Reid’s friend, NRA boss Wayne LaPierre, to head the problem off at the pass by putting language in the bill that would mollify the gun lobby.

Further, there was concern that a conspiracy theory then in circulation among right-wing circles—a meme suggesting that the Obama Administration had cleverly planted language in the ACA that could be used as a tool to get to the guns—would further erode public support for the legislation. For these reasons, Reid determined to insert some cozy language for the gun people into the Senate version of the ACA—language certain to escape public review at a time when the conversation was far more focused on hot button subjects like death panels, taxes and mandates.

For these reasons, the following language did, indeed, become a part of the nation’s controversial health care reform law:

(c) PROTECTION OF SECOND AMENDMENT GUN RIGHTS.—

‘‘(1) WELLNESS AND PREVENTION PROGRAMS.— A wellness and health promotion activity implemented under subsection (a)(1)(D) may not require the disclosure or collection of any information relating to—

‘‘(A) the presence or storage of a lawfully- possessed firearm or ammunition in the residence or on the property of an individual; or

‘‘(B) the lawful use, possession, or storage of a firearm or ammunition by an individual. ‘‘

(2) LIMITATION ON DATA COLLECTION.—None of the authorities provided to the Secretary under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act or an amendment made by that Act shall be construed to authorize or may be used for the collection of any in- formation relating to—

‘‘(A) the lawful ownership or possession of a firearm or ammunition;

‘‘(B) the lawful use of a firearm or ammunition; or

‘‘(C) the lawful storage of a firearm or ammunition.

‘‘(3) LIMITATION ON DATABASES OR DATA BANKS.—None of the authorities provided to the Secretary under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act or an amendment made by that Act shall be construed to authorize or may be used to maintain records of individual ownership or possession of a firearm or ammunition.

If you count yourself among those who object to any legislation or executive order that could limit or delay your ability to buy a flamethrower at the local gun show, this is certainly language that will put a smile on your face as this provision limits opportunities to collect and keep data on those who own firearms while creating some roadblocks when it comes to government’s ability to track whether or not you keep a weapon in your home, etc.

However, before you fire off a few rounds in celebration, you might want to take a good hard look at the actual draft of this section of the health care reform law because, unless you suspect that the President plans to put any newly proposed controls over firearms under the jurisdiction of the Secretary of Health and Human Services, I’m afraid you don’t really have much to celebrate.

The provision in question bars the HHS Secretary, anyone in the Secretary’s ‘chain of command’, and health professionals covered by this section of the ACA, from engaging in the collection of gun data through the ordinary course of the services they provide. By way of example, were someone to come into the emergency room for treatment of a nasty gunpowder burn, the attending physician would likely ask how the injury took place. When the injured answers by noting that something went wrong when firing his Bushmaster at the target range, this law prevents the physician, hospital or anyone else from feeding the information to a government data base and further prevents the HHS Department from collecting such data.

The law additionally prohibits the government from making the argument that, since guns can be deleterious to the health and wellness of people, it would be within the goals and objectives of the ACA to collect data on who has weapons in the effort to protect the health and wellness of of Americans. In other words, HHS cannot create a data base to collect info on guns under the theory that guns injure people’s health so they need to know where the guns are.

So, the good news for the gun folks is that the ACA is, indeed, prevented from being used as a weapon in the ‘War on Guns’ under the guise that guns are bad for people’s health. They can also take solace in the fact that the law prevents government from collecting any gun data resulting from information obtained in the course of medical providers doing their thing—much as HIPAA prevents such information from being used for a variety of purposes.

Beyond that, if you imagine that this obscure section of the Affordable Care Act is going to block the Administration from exercising whatever legal authority it may have to regulate guns in America, I’m afraid you will be quite disappointed.

I think all would agree that should the President resolve to use his executive powers to create a data base or any other regulatory provision, it is far more likely that such regulation would fall within the ambit of the Justice Department—not Health & Human Services—and nothing in the ACA prevents such data collection, or any other regulatory efforts, which would fall outside the limited jurisdiction created in Obamacare with respect to firearms.

So, to our friends at Breitbart and the others who believe they have discovered gold in their effort to prevent the administration from acting on its desire to bring sanity to our gun laws, I’m afraid you are going to have to reload as Obamacare is just not the magic bullet you are looking for.

Related:

What Piece of Seemingly Benign Advice From an NRA Speaker Has Liberal Sites Up in Arms?

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This Is How a Secret Gun Provision Made its Way Into Obamacare Legislation

The Blaze: There’s a widely-unknown provision in the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare) — legislative wording that is capturing attention in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Pushed by the National Rifle Association (NRA), a newly-noticed regulation that was placed deep within the bill back in 2010, among other things, bans doctors from documenting patients’ answers to questions that focus upon guns.

The Washington Post first reported on Dec. 30 about the presence of this controversial wording. Under a section with the headline “Protection of Second Amendment Gun Rights,” the NRA-advocated wording is nestled deep within the law. The Post called the inclusion, “a largely overlooked but significant challenge to a movement in American medicine to treat firearms as a matter of public health.”

As the outlet also noted, it was in the final stretch of the debate over Obama’s health care legislation that the NRA successfully pushed to insert this language. Below, see the portions of the Affordable Care Act that include mentions of firearms and the parameters through which doctors must operate in questioning patients (read the entire health care bill here):

 On Tuesday, CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta spoke on-air with “Situation Room” host Wolf Blitzer. The two discussed how the gun provision made its way into health care legislation, while also explaining portions of the text for viewers.

Gupta noted that the initiative to have the wording included during the contentious health care debate was rooted in the NRA’s stance that patients should not be penalized or discriminated against for owning firearms. As can be seen from the above portion of the legislation, while doctors are not banned from asking about guns, they are forbidden from documenting the information and using it for research purposes.

Watch Gupta explain the additive language HERE:

In addition to gun-owner information and how it must be handled by doctors, the text also notes that the law cannot be used to keep and maintain records of individuals’ firearm possession, nor can it be used to track ammunition. Additionally, the language deals with the price of health care coverage, noting that cost cannot be impacted by the possession or ownership of guns, the Post also reported.

Following the tragedy at Sandy Hook, the presence of this provision has gained some press, with select politicians and medical groups taking a stand against it. Advocates are worried that research and medical care could suffer as a result of the wording; some are even pushing the Obama administration to consider changes to the text in light of recent events and an impending battle over new gun control legislation.

The Post has more about the ongoing battle between the NRA and physicians and advocates who stand opposed to the language inserted into the Affordable Care legislation:

NRA officials say they requested the provision out of concern that insurance companies could use such data to raise premiums on gun owners. The measure’s supporters in the Senate say they did not intend to interfere with the work of doctors or researchers.

But physician groups and researchers see the provision as part of a decades-long strategy by the gun lobby to choke off federal support for studies of firearms violence.

The research restrictions began in the 1990s, when the NRA urged Congress to cut funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s division that studied gun violence. In 1996, Congress sharply limited the agency’s ability to fund that type of research.

This is extremely important at this time with the shocker information recently released that there is now a 'Vaccine' that prevents gun violence and the implications of the use of that vaccine in today’s control frenzy climate coming from the White House and progressive liberals in general!

 

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi take part in a joint Senate and House session to count of the Electoral College votes for the 2012 presidential election at the Capitol Hill in Washington on January 4, 2013. US President Barack Obama was officially declared the winner of 2012 presidential election after the counting session– a quaint formality, perhaps, but constitutionally required. Credit: AFP/Getty Images

Just as interesting as the debate over the provision, itself, is the notion that it was Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), an NRA-supporter, who added the wording to the bill back in 2010. While a spokesperson for Reid told the Post that the leader never spoke with the NRA about the wording and that he did not believe that “it changed gun laws in any way,” that hasn’t stopped critics from wondering why Reid so staunchly supported the measure.

The language was purportedly added to stem off criticism from the NRA that could have railroaded, delayed or prevented the controversial health care bill from passing. Also, the wording was placed deep within the bill in an effort to convince people not to embrace so-called conspiracy theories about Obamacare — mainly that the legislation would be used to keep and maintain a massive gun-ownership database. Once the language was added, the NRA reportedly remained neutral regarding passage of the law.

While Reid has been a gun rights advocate for quite some time, the politician may be having a change of heart in the wake of recent shootings and controversy surrounding this language. An adviser who spoke off-the-record, recently told CNN that the senator is “in a different place than he was in 2010″ when it comes to firearms.

Cross-Posted at Ask Marion

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Shocker! 'Vaccine' prevents gun violence

NRA Releases List of Celebrities, Organizations that Support Gun Control

FBI: More People Killed with Hammers, Clubs Each Year than Rifles

Biden: Obama Considering Executive Orders on Guns

All NYC Gun Owners Posted Online

Former FBI Informant Says: Obama Will Destroy America Once He Has All The Guns… as Details of False Flag and Conspiracy in Connecticut Shooting Appear

Pravda tells America: Keep your guns

English Warning To Americans: DONT GIVE UP YOUR GUNS!

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Shocker! 'Vaccine' prevents gun violence

WND: In recent years, some physicians and physician groups have proposed that “gun violence” be considered a disease – that we should analyze these public mass shootings as we would a disease and, using that paradigm, search for a cure.

Of course their cure is always disarmament of all citizens, not just criminals. But the same docs want more “evidence-based medicine,” and the evidence points to a very different approach.

In the late 18th century, a London physician, Edward Jenner, learned from local dairymen that dairy maids who got cowpox never contracted the more fatal smallpox. He speculated that cowpox somehow prevented smallpox and tested this theory by taking germs from the cowpox lesions and inoculating unexposed persons. These people were shown to survive smallpox outbreaks unscathed and thus was born the science of immunology and the process of controlling the deadly disease of smallpox. This is real science – observation, testing and practice – no politics involved.

If we observe gun violence as a “disease,” one thing is strikingly clear – this disease never strikes people known to be or potentially armed! It may be true that the recent Connecticut shooter was mentally ill, but he was not so crazy as to take on a police station. Neither he, nor any of the other similar shooters, decide to shoot up gun stores or NRA conventioneers. They may be crazy, but apparently not that crazy.

No, they invariably pick gun-free zones for their mayhem. And when confronted with an armed counterforce, they either surrender or shoot themselves. They do not wage gun battles against other armed people.

So, using the logic of Edward Jenner, the inoculation to prevent the disease of gun violence is putting guns into the hands of potential victims. So thinking like Edward Jenner, lets see what happens when we do just that – arm citizens by permitting concealed carrying of firearms.

Dr. Jacob Deakins, in an excellent review of the subject, “Guns, Truth, Medicine and the Constitution,” points out that both the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2004 and the Center for Disease Control in 2003 failed to find any written evidence that gun control reduced violent crime, suicides or gun violence.

Dr. Deakins goes on to cite John Lott Jr., who reviewed the FBI’s yearly crime statistics for all 3,054 U.S. counties over 18 years (1977-1994). This constitutes the largest national survey of gun ownership and state police documentation in illegal gun use.

Lott concludes:

• While neither state waiting periods nor the federal Brady Law is associated with a reduction in crime rates, adopting concealed-carry gun laws cut death rates from public multiple shootings by 69 percent.
• Allowing people to carry concealed weapons deters violent crime – without any apparent increase in accidental death. If states without right-to-carry laws had adopted them in 1992, about 1,570 murders, 4,177 rapes and 60,000 aggravated assaults would have been avoided annually.
• Children 14 to 15 years of age are 14.5 times more likely to die from automobile injuries, five times more likely to die from drowning or fire and burns and three times more likely to die from bicycle accidents than they are to die from gun accidents.
• When concealed-carry laws went into effect in a given county, murders fell by 8 percent, rapes by 5 percent and aggravated assaults by 7 percent.
• For each additional year concealed-carry laws are in effect, the murder rate declines by 3 percent, robberies by more than 2 percent and rape by 1 percent.

It is generally conceded that immunization of some percentage of a population confers decreased risk of disease on the entire group, not just those immunized – the so-called “herd immunity.” So too, allowing people voluntarily to carry concealed weapons confers some protection on those not carrying – because criminals and crazies never know if the person they confront will be armed.

Recently in New York State, a newspaper published a who’s who of registered gun owners in two counties, giving out names and addresses. Part of the ensuing hue and cry came, not from those listed, but from people not on the list who had just been “outed” as being unarmed. They felt they had been put at risk by this information. So too every no-gun sticker on every hospital or school door puts occupants of the building at risk.

Edward Jenner wasn’t the first person to invent vaccination – he was the first to fine tune it and sell the idea to the masses. More people have died as the result of smallpox than from all the wars combined, but now no one dies thanks to appropriate medical action.

How many unarmed populations will be genocidally murdered, how many shootings will take place in gun-free zones before we get the point, take appropriate action and allow weapons to be carried by those at risk and/or their defenders?

Related:

Statistics Prove: More Guns, Less Crime

FBI: More People Killed with Hammers, Clubs Each Year than Rifles

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