Apparently in the US there's no straight and honest discourse about anything anymore. In Europe there are various neurodivergent-adjacent groups and products too, but it's more practically focused and less about identity. Professional psychiatrists, even sceptical ones, have space in european mainstream media and pushing stuff not in DSM is uncommon.
Social contagion might be happening, not denying that, but I would not discount other organic "not placebo" factors causing disorders. Our life did change drastically since 2000.
I had a midlife/mental health crisis that caused me to discover I was a schizotype, like about 5% of the population I have just a little bit of the "thought disorder" which people with schizophrenia have. No doubt this can cause attention and executive functions for certain people who will be misdiagnosed with ADHD or that the resulting social anhedonia [1] will be misdiagnosed as Autism.
You never hear about it because there was an epic confrontation between an academic who wrote forceful monographs pushing a viewpoint that was probably less true and another who organized conferences that published tentative proceedings with no clear conclusions that might have been more true [2]... the later one so schizotypy got eaten by autism. The book by the first academic changed my life, I could have skipped past the conference proceedings over and over again dismissing them as "a bunch of psychometricians screwing around with scales had a conference, so what"
I sure as hell want to erase #ActuallyAutistic everywhere I can and replace it with #SurelySchizotypal
[1] somehow teachers and other professional adults can't see what is wrong with you but the other kids in your kindergarten class can't unsee it so you'll be a bully magnet no matter what
[2] for which "nothing more to see here move on folks" would arise to about as many people as who might wonder how posh the conference center was
Apparently in the US there's no straight and honest discourse about anything anymore. In Europe there are various neurodivergent-adjacent groups and products too, but it's more practically focused and less about identity. Professional psychiatrists, even sceptical ones, have space in european mainstream media and pushing stuff not in DSM is uncommon.
Social contagion might be happening, not denying that, but I would not discount other organic "not placebo" factors causing disorders. Our life did change drastically since 2000.
I had a midlife/mental health crisis that caused me to discover I was a schizotype, like about 5% of the population I have just a little bit of the "thought disorder" which people with schizophrenia have. No doubt this can cause attention and executive functions for certain people who will be misdiagnosed with ADHD or that the resulting social anhedonia [1] will be misdiagnosed as Autism.
You never hear about it because there was an epic confrontation between an academic who wrote forceful monographs pushing a viewpoint that was probably less true and another who organized conferences that published tentative proceedings with no clear conclusions that might have been more true [2]... the later one so schizotypy got eaten by autism. The book by the first academic changed my life, I could have skipped past the conference proceedings over and over again dismissing them as "a bunch of psychometricians screwing around with scales had a conference, so what"
I sure as hell want to erase #ActuallyAutistic everywhere I can and replace it with #SurelySchizotypal
[1] somehow teachers and other professional adults can't see what is wrong with you but the other kids in your kindergarten class can't unsee it so you'll be a bully magnet no matter what
[2] for which "nothing more to see here move on folks" would arise to about as many people as who might wonder how posh the conference center was