Article: Celebrities ‘making autism seem desirable – and that’s misleading’

Sly Saint

Sly Saint

Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Telegraph (needs sub)
Celebrities are glamorising ADHD and autism by making a diagnosis seem desirable, a leading neurologist has claimed.

Dr Suzanne O’Sullivan said the uplifting accounts of famous people were misleading the public and setting them up for failure. Autism can be a severe disability but it is now being over-diagnosed, she added.
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In recent years, a number of celebrities have spoken of being diagnosed with ADHD and autism as adults, some in middle age.

“We’re misleading people as a society,” Dr O’Sullivan said during a talk at the Cheltenham Literature Festival. “We’ve got an awful lot of celebrities saying, ‘Well, I got my diagnosis and the world opened up to me.’ And they get book deals and stand-up comedy tours.

“The average person who gets diagnosed will not get those things, but we have a culture of leading people to believe that a diagnosis will lead somewhere wonderful.

“It’s now being incorporated into people’s personalities as an identity. I work with people with epilepsy. We’ve never called them ‘epileptics’ – we call them ‘people with epilepsy’ because they are people who happen to have that disease.

“Whereas now the trend is to say ‘I am autistic’, rather than ‘I’m a person with autism’. And that is a real problem because, once you incorporate your illness into your identity, how do you get better?”
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Dr O’Sullivan, a consultant neurologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London, works with patients whose autism causes severe learning disabilities. She is the author of The Age of Diagnosis, which argues that we are overdiagnosing mild cases of autism, as well as of ADHD and long Covid.
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eta: "....is now being over-diagnosed"......
So who is doing the diagnosing, and why?
 
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This woman is incredibly dangerous.

I don't think its a coincidence that her and Wessely are being elevated as the naysayers of 'overdiagnosis' now.

It's quite frightening as an autistic person that we seem to be in the crosshairs both from the far right (RFK, Farage) and centre (Wessely, S O'S, the DWP).

She doesn't even understand what postive things you get from diagnosis. The world doesn't 'open up to you', you understand yourself better and can adjust your life accordingly to better accommodate your strengths and struggles.

Or that you do say a dyslexic person, a dyspraxic person etc. (Person with autism is generally disliked among autistic people, we preffer the latter) Or that you can't 'get better' from autism! This I think lays bear the central fear of the psychobehavioural project. You have a bunch of psychiatrists and psychologists so terrified of chronic incurable health issues that they are manifesting a reality where they can cure or at least improve them.

Anyway perhaps the world might have opened up to me after being diagnosed with autism but unfortunately a year before that I had come down with an illness that for some reason doctors seemed rather afraid to diagnose...
 
Sly Saint said:
According to KCL, they are 'under-diagnosing'.....

www.dailymail.co.uk

Could you be one of the 'millions' of undiagnosed autistic adults?

A top UK-based psychologist has shared seven tell-tale signs of autism in adults.
www.dailymail.co.uk www.dailymail.co.uk
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This is the thing! I have friends who are almost certainly autistic and struggling because of it who literally cannot get an assessment because there is basically no NHS provision.

And being diagnosed later in life for me (late 20s) meant that by the time I was diagnosed I had already developed serious mental health and addiction issues from struggling to be 'normal' and trying to cope with my sensory symptoms and mood swings etc.

The idea that because autism might be two conditions (although it might not, look at how differently mild and very severe ME present), the people with the less debilitating presentation are fine and should be thrown to the wolves is callous and illogical.

Although I suppose we should thank our lucky stars O'Sullivan isn't telling everyone that people with level 3 autism are just neurotic...
 
“The average person who gets diagnosed will not get those things, but we have a culture of leading people to believe that a diagnosis will lead somewhere wonderful.
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How is anyone taking this nonsense seriously? Where do they even come up with this stuff? She seems to be following the typical influencer path of saying more outrageous things because this is how you get as much coverage as she does. She got a lot of headlines this year and it's all because she is talking nonsense that gets drunks at a punch howling with laughter because punches down.

There's always money and power in punching down.
 
“It’s now being incorporated into people’s personalities as an identity. I work with people with epilepsy. We’ve never called them ‘epileptics’ – we call them ‘people with epilepsy’ because they are people who happen to have that disease.

“Whereas now the trend is to say ‘I am autistic’, rather than ‘I’m a person with autism’. And that is a real problem because, once you incorporate your illness into your identity, how do you get better?”
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Are people who say "I am blind" or "I am deaf" pathologically identified with that part of themselves? No. This literal interpretation is so irritating. So much of this is at least partially due to linguistic accident: autism lends itself well to being made into an adjective, whereas ME/CFS doesn't.

Even more so because health professionals had to be coached into the "people with..." wording because they DID refer to "the epileptic/Down's in bed 4" and seemed to have forgotten the humanity of their patients at times.

Health professionals' job is to diagnose and treat, not dictate how and when people communicate their diagnosis or difference to others.
 
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