[tgv]

That's assuming he's dumb/stupid/retarded as well. A person with sufficient intellect and self-control is capable of suppressing such actions after a punishment. It doesn't have to be a heavy sentence, but autism by itself is not sufficient.

Well, autism as it's used today. It used to be reserved for rather severe cases, but the meaning has been watered down a bit.

[Cthulhu_]

"watered down"? You mean it's understood better, that it's not even a scale but a series of scales of symptoms that are different for everyone, with a lot of overlap with ADHD.

[tgv]

> with a lot of overlap with ADHD

That just shows the extent of how well it's understood. Both are a diagnosis without known cause and cure.

> series of scales of symptoms

So, radically altered. The label is attached to people that just register on one or two of those scales, instead of to the institutionalized that term originally referred to. If you take offense to me calling that "watered down," why don't you correct everybody who's calling it autism/autistic instead of "ASD".

Anyway, the point was: autism in a modern, colloquial sense is nowhere near as invasive as in its original sense. There's no reason to assume people labeled "autistic" in the press is severely mentally handicapped to the point where they can't take responsibility for their own actions.

[sph]

Please stop this myth of ADHD overlap, I keep reading this everywhere. There are a lot of autistic kids misdiagnosed with ADHD, but they are not the same. In some aspects they are complete opposite.

Nowhere in the ADHD definition difficulty to understand social norms or to empathise appear. They present very differently to society. I do believe that an ADHD diagnosis should not carry a reduced sentence because we are completely able to understand and see the world like neurotypical people.

There is no overlap, just ignorance and misdiagnosis.

Sincerely, a non-autistic ADHD person.

[roxgib]

Yeah, I'm in the same boat as you, and it's super frustrating to be put under the same label. Tt seems like there's this compulsion to mention that one is often comorbid with the other, but those numbers are questionable, since someone who has autism is more likely to have their ADHD picked up, and vice versa, so those who have both end up being over represented in diagnoses.

[alpaca128]

They may have meant comorbidity, which afaik is relatively frequent. And I'm not sure it's misdiagnosed that often just because of ignorance, but then again I'd probably fall into the ignorant(or rather uneducated) category myself in this field.

[Cthulhu_]

I'm not saying they express themselves in the same way, I'm saying they're related, probably more closely than we know now.

Sincerely, a non-ADHD autistic person with an ADHD + autistic girlfriend.