Comments on: JP

By: JP’s Mother

JP’s Mother — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 19:05:15 +0000

[...] Charlie was diagnosed with autism, I felt a special, quiet, kinship with her: Her oldest son, JP, is severely disabled. It’s not clear what happened to JP, though it seems he has been [...]

By: Finding Jean and Molly

Finding Jean and Molly — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 03:29:33 +0000

[...] to find his sister, Molly, in a film called Where’s Molly. Daly was 6 years old when his then 3-year-old sister was sent to an institution; he only found out about her in 2004 after his parents had both [...]

By: HeatherS

HeatherS — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 20:14:26 +0000

I, of course, don’t know you from a bar of soap, except what I’ve been reading over the last week or so, so please forgive me if this is too bold, but…. If I were in your shoes, with a relative in a nearby institution, I would run, not walk, to that institution as fast as I could. If there’s one thing my last few weeks of research and enlightenment into the world of neurodiversity have taught me is that you have no idea what that young man is capable of, how delighted he may be, no matter how little he is able to express is, to have visitors, to know that his life is not simply to wait around to die. I implore to to visit him as soon as is reasonably possible.

By: Mercurys Rising in Nature Medicine

Mercurys Rising in Nature Medicine — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 04:33:52 +0000

[...] As I think you can tell by now, though I am a mom, I am not a “MAM” or a Mercury. I think we have to stop belittling the “better diagnosis” argument and take a hard look at ourselves and, along with consideration of all the other research into autism aetiology (genetics, environment, both, more), see how much autism there is and even has been already around us, or maybe not around us—not if so many previous generations of adults diagnosed with mental retardation and intellectual disabilities were institutionalized. [...]

By: FXS mom

FXS mom — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 14:37:17 +0000

I never knew that club 166…thx for sharing.

By: Club 166

Club 166 — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 02:51:34 +0000

One slight correction. The Arc used to be known as The ARC (for Association for Retarded Citizens, as you pointed out). They officially changed their name to The Arc (I forget the exact date, but believe it was in the 90’s).

The new name is not and acronym for anything, but retains the same spelling for name recognition.

By: M'sDad

M'sDad — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 02:50:02 +0000

This, I think, is a potentially interesting piece of the puzzle (!!) of “where are the adult autistics”, at least as far as individuals who are not as self-sufficient as those whom Kristina flagged in a previous post (my html skills aren’t good enough to link back — Kristina, can you provide that?).

When those who remark that they didn’t encounter autistic kids while they were growing up (or in their medical practice 20 years ago, or whatever) use that information to deduce that the presence of more autistic kids in “mainstreamed” situations nowadays is evidence of an “epidemic”, they are possibly not taking into account these “disappeared” individuals.

Since there’s plenty of back-and-forth about autism and mental retardation — with, as I understand it, increasing opinion that non-verbal autistics are not mentally retarded, or at least not as “mentally incapable” as they have been stereotypically branded by some — I wonder if JP could have been labeled “low-functioning autistic” rather than “profoundly mentally retarded” if a different doctor, at a different time, had been responsible for his labeling.

Certainly it would be interesting to see these statistics correlated with the “epidemic” vs. “better/changed diagnosis” debate.

By: mcewen

mcewen — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 01:41:37 +0000

How extraordinary!
Best wishes