By Simon Baron-Cohen — 2019
It remains controversial—but it doesn’t have to be. We need to embrace both the neurodiversity model and the medical model to fully understand autism.
Read on blogs.scientificamerican.com
CLEAR ALL
The ongoing dialogue I have with my own perspective and emotions is the biggest job I’ve ever undertaken. Exploring this internal give-and-take forces me to grow in surprising ways.
More than a million children in America are the autism spectrum. What happens when they come of age?
Being disabled means hundreds of thousands of people believe they always know better than you do.
Look more closely and you’ll see.
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Normal bereavement and major depression share many of the same symptoms. And because of those similarities, psychiatrists have historically carved out what is known as a "bereavement exclusion." Its purpose was to reduce the likelihood that normal grief would be diagnosed as clinical depression.
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I believe that social workers need to focus on that which we are trained to do: extend civic love and compassion to the client, staring where he or she is. We are not wed to the medical model; social work is ecological, psychosocial, and systems oriented.
Demand from patients seeking help for their mental illnesses has led to underground use in a way that parallels black markets in the AIDS pandemic. This underground use has been most perilous for people of color, who face greater stigma and legal risks due to the War on Drugs.
When a medication is being evaluated to modify the behavior of a person with autism, one must assess the risks versus the benefits.