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Author: Patrick Dwyer

How Not to Treat Sensory Anxiety

How Not to Treat Sensory Anxiety

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Autistic sensory sensitivities are closely related to anxiety.  I hope this isn’t a terribly controversial point.  There are now several studies showing the existence of an association between sensory symptoms and anxiety (e.g., Mazurek et al., 2013; Uljarević et al., 2016).  Furthermore, it just makes sense that sensory sensitivities would be associated with anxiety.  When my sensory sensitivities were really bad, they caused genuine distress.  Naturally, I didn’t enjoy being overwhelmed by my environment and experiencing sensory distress.  Therefore, I…

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The Need for Adult Diagnostic Services

The Need for Adult Diagnostic Services

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After my recent, somewhat abstract and theoretical post on neurodiversity, I thought it might be a good time to turn to something a little more practical.  I think it’s about time I wrote a post I should have written long ago: a rant about the expensive, inaccessible, disorganized, uncoordinated, under-capacity, and generally grossly inadequate system for diagnosing autistic adults. I hear that jurisdictions in the UK are moving to make obtaining a diagnosis is a relatively accessible process.  But across…

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Context, Group Size, and Social Demands

Context, Group Size, and Social Demands

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All else being equal, how many other people would you like to interact with at any given time?  Would you rather be in a one-on-one conversation, in a small social group, or in front of a giant hall giving a lecture? I’ve discussed this with a few autistic people, and most of us agree that the group situations are the worst.[1] Not all neurotypicals seem to understand the difficulty of group interactions until it is explicitly pointed out to them,…

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The Misrepresentation of Neurodiversity

The Misrepresentation of Neurodiversity

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I’ve previously argued that the pathology paradigm is in crisis and that the neurodiversity paradigm is ready to replace the obsolete pathology paradigm.  I’ve argued that we’re in a period of paradigm shift.  And I stand by those words.  However, there one more thing that we have to do before the paradigms can shift: we have to agree on what the pathology and neurodiversity paradigms are. Paradigms are grand theories that dictate the fundamental assumptions we use to approach some…

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What’s the Point of Social Skills?

What’s the Point of Social Skills?

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Just to be clear, despite the title, I’m not questioning the idea that social skills are real or useful. No, instead I’m asking why social skills are useful.  What is their purpose? It’s not a pointless or stupid question, because I can think of at least a couple of good answers: They are useful for building and maintaining friendships, social connections that are valuable because of their inherent worth; or They are useful for instrumental social interactions: for use in…

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Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Why Do Some People Believe?

Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Why Do Some People Believe?

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There are still people who believe in the most bizarre “cures” for autism.  We see stories about the continued use of chelation (which reportedly has the rather nasty side-effect of occasionally killing people) and bleach “MMS” (ditto).  Some of these complementary and alternative treatment approaches seem so utterly bizarre as to be completely devoid of any vestiges of logic, reason, or science: I once had a parent earnestly tell me that giant magnets under her autistic child’s bed were essential…

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The Autism Epidemic – Why Now?

The Autism Epidemic – Why Now?

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I’ve previously written about the “autism epidemic” and why I think it all just reflects better diagnosis rather than an actual increase in the true incidence of autism.  However, this still leaves us with an interesting question: what exactly happened to increase rates of diagnosis? The diagnosed prevalence of autism has been increasing for a long time, but one big change was the emergence of the idea of so-called “high functioning” autism in the 1980s.  Before then, autism had been…

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Falsifiability, Resources, and School Placements

Falsifiability, Resources, and School Placements

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I want to deal with a possible objection to my views on educational placement (which you can find described here). I think the universal inclusionists – those who want all children to be educated in the mainstream – use rhetorical trickery to paper over the weaknesses in their arguments.  They define “inclusion” as being a state in which all students are meaningfully and fully included as part of a mainstream school community.  Any case where a student is not meaningfully…

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On Biomarkers

On Biomarkers

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The research world seems to love “biomarkers.”  Not only does “biomarker” appear to be a very fashionable buzzword in certain circles, but it seems like projects that aim to find biomarkers are very attractive to agencies that fund research.[1]  Among researchers, biomarkers are in the vogue. What is a “biomarker,” exactly? Well, properly speaking, it refers to some kind of biological marker – something like a physiological, functional, chemical, or molecular signal.  This biological marker might tell us that a…

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Rational Paranoia

Rational Paranoia

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Dealing with autistic adults and adolescents can sometimes be difficult.  I know many of us can be quick to take offense, even where none was intended – which is rather curious when you think about it, because autistic children tend to start out being socially naïve.  At some point, these naïve children can become nervous, reactive adults.  Why is that?  It seems kind of like a transformation from one extreme to the opposite extreme. Well, the problem with naïveté is…

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