by Marie Snyder

There are a few ideas I’ve seen floating around on social media about people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) having no empathy, no Theory of Mind, and being in need of fixing instead of accommodating. I just ignored them. But then I heard similar statements in a university class with controversial Autism Speaks and Hopebridge videos on the curriculum. I relayed my concerns about promoting only these organizations without explanation of current concerns and without providing other perspectives like from the National Autistic Society or Autistic Self Advocacy Network. This is a bit of a take-down on what appears to be an accepted curriculum around autism.

What is ASD? C.L. Lynch at NeuroClastic explains the spectrum really well using this illustration. You need to be affected in several of these areas regularly to be on the spectrum, and every person’s different. It’s complex. I went so far as to craft an assessment, the AQ-27, not remotely peer reviewed but rooted in the DSM-5, after being absolutely floored by the offensiveness or inaccuracy of the official assessments we had to learn in class. 

The Controversy:

Some advocates are “furious over the tone of the [Autism Speaks] video. ‘We don’t want to be portrayed as burdens or objects of fear and pity.” Hopebridge suffered scandals when an employee was fired for reporting an abusive incident with accounts of “undertrained staff and high turnover, a lack of transparency and accountability, and practices that prioritize profit over the needs and safety of young people with autism.” Some implications that people with ASD require lifelong care have been questioned since original stats were based on studies of children in psychiatric wards: “This potential bias means that we still know relatively little about the achievements of individuals in whom the presentation of early symptoms is more subtle.”  Read more »