Great video. I think there is a fine line between seeking validation with a mental health diagnosis and seeking identity with a diagnosis. I’ve seen a lot of people become diagnosed with something and that becoming their entire personality.
There is also a discussion about seeing the autism “spectrum” not as a variation of severity of autism, but rather as a variation of the various symptoms and aspects of autism. There is talk about the spiky profile of autism, where an autistic person may have some abilities that are particularly strong while others are particularly weak. And there is a lot of variation between autistic people in terms of which the strengths and weaknesses are. (Of course they all share weaknesses in social interaction. But there are many more aspects to autism.) This is somewhat similar to the clusters of abilities and disabilities in ADHD people that were mentioned in the video. Some researchers in the UK even tentatively brought up the idea of calling it the autistic “constellation” or “constellations”, to make clear that it’s not a grading of something like severity, but recognizing various different profiles in autistic people.
Great video. I think there is a fine line between seeking validation with a mental health diagnosis and seeking identity with a diagnosis. I’ve seen a lot of people become diagnosed with something and that becoming their entire personality.
Thank you for your valid information Dr Kruse
There is also a discussion about seeing the autism “spectrum” not as a variation of severity of autism, but rather as a variation of the various symptoms and aspects of autism. There is talk about the spiky profile of autism, where an autistic person may have some abilities that are particularly strong while others are particularly weak. And there is a lot of variation between autistic people in terms of which the strengths and weaknesses are. (Of course they all share weaknesses in social interaction. But there are many more aspects to autism.) This is somewhat similar to the clusters of abilities and disabilities in ADHD people that were mentioned in the video.
Some researchers in the UK even tentatively brought up the idea of calling it the autistic “constellation” or “constellations”, to make clear that it’s not a grading of something like severity, but recognizing various different profiles in autistic people.