I recently offered autism awareness training to the residents and staff of a therapeutic community. As usual I began with an overview of autism and how it is seen in the community at large. When I expressed my support of the current National Autistic Society campaign to speed up the diagnostic process one of the staff commented “ It is interesting that just as we in mental health, and especially here in this community, are moving away from diagnosis and labelling – because we think it’s important to treat people as individuals – you are advocating more diagnosis.”
At this point I need to clarify that what I think is important is the identification rather than diagnosis of autism. However lack of a diagnosis can lead to the identification of autism not being accepted. The neurological landscape is such that some neurological atypicalities (including autism) are regarded as diagnosable medical conditions rather than a natural part of human diversity. This means that identification of autism is often only accepted if it is confirmed by an official diagnosis. I hope this will change but currently for many people the only way to be accepted as autistic, even within their own family and community, is to get validation from health professionals in the form of a diagnosis.
So I think it is useful for others in a therapeutic community to know if a resident is autistic. This is for the same reason that others need to know what language individual residents speak; this seems so obvious it does not need stating. However spoken language is only one mode of communication. It is believed that up to 90% of communication is non-verbal, and one of the traits of autism is a difference in non-verbal communication. Without awareness of that difference, understanding is difficult. Similarly various assumptions are made about “normal” development and what health would look like, but “normal development” for an autistic person is atypical and does not follow the usual trajectory.
If you consider life to be a journey, people who get lost on that journey might find themselves in a therapeutic community. The ultimate aim of the therapeutic community is to enable people to continue their life journey in the larger community.
We use maps to plot our paths on journeys. We find our starting point and our destination and establish the best path from here to there. However it is impossible to do this if you don’t know where you’re starting from, even if you know where you want to go. You need to know where you are to start travelling in the right direction. You need to know where someone else is if you are to accompany them. If you don’t know someone is autistic it is hard to help them progress on their life journey as you won’t have a realistic idea of their starting point or their mode of travel.
At this point I need to clarify that what I think is important is the identification rather than diagnosis of autism. However lack of a diagnosis can lead to the identification of autism not being accepted. The neurological landscape is such that some neurological atypicalities (including autism) are regarded as diagnosable medical conditions rather than a natural part of human diversity. This means that identification of autism is often only accepted if it is confirmed by an official diagnosis. I hope this will change but currently for many people the only way to be accepted as autistic, even within their own family and community, is to get validation from health professionals in the form of a diagnosis.
So I think it is useful for others in a therapeutic community to know if a resident is autistic. This is for the same reason that others need to know what language individual residents speak; this seems so obvious it does not need stating. However spoken language is only one mode of communication. It is believed that up to 90% of communication is non-verbal, and one of the traits of autism is a difference in non-verbal communication. Without awareness of that difference, understanding is difficult. Similarly various assumptions are made about “normal” development and what health would look like, but “normal development” for an autistic person is atypical and does not follow the usual trajectory.
If you consider life to be a journey, people who get lost on that journey might find themselves in a therapeutic community. The ultimate aim of the therapeutic community is to enable people to continue their life journey in the larger community.
We use maps to plot our paths on journeys. We find our starting point and our destination and establish the best path from here to there. However it is impossible to do this if you don’t know where you’re starting from, even if you know where you want to go. You need to know where you are to start travelling in the right direction. You need to know where someone else is if you are to accompany them. If you don’t know someone is autistic it is hard to help them progress on their life journey as you won’t have a realistic idea of their starting point or their mode of travel.
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