| Autism shapes personality and worldview, meaning it shapes the person and their sense of self. It doesn't cause suffering in a vacuum the same way other disorders do. The biggest "issues" attributed to autism come from lack of accomodations and the tendency to falsely attribute comorbidities as being part of autism. A huge difference between autism and the other listed things is that autism is not (and never will be) legitimately treatable, while depression, anxiety, and ADHD are treatable and have been for a long time. Amphetamine targets dopamine dysregulation and it's highly effective at improving quality of life. Autism has no equivalent. No drug has ever shown efficacy in improving the quality of life of autistic people, nor has any therapy. They've all been damaging, and the mainstream autism junk-science treatment today is ineffective according to meta-analyses[1], is based on gay conversion therapy, has been shown to cause PTSD[2]. Treating autism stops making sense (and thinking of it as important to identity starts making sense) when you realize that having an autistic brain means using a different but equally-effective social model[3], mode of thinking, and algorithms for processing information, that in many cases has tangible advantages. [1] https://therapistndc.org/aba-is-not-effective-so-says-the-la... [2] https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/AIA-08-2... [3] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.5861... |