Man these autism topics are popping up quite a lot lately, guess that's my cue to jump in.

Allow me to provide ample insight on the "condition" known as autism. As for my credentials - I was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, under the umbrella of Autism Spectrum Disorder, 10 years ago when I was 23 and this led me into the field of psychology and immediately obtained my Bachelors degree in the field and am now getting my Masters in counseling where I frequently use autism as the subject matter of papers. Needless to say, I have a relation to and knowledge on the condition.




What is it?
Autism, for the most part, is misunderstood even on the way it's diagnosed and explained. To explain it simply, Autism is a set of conditions that affects a person's cognitive ability to socially relate with others. In layman's terms, Autism makes it hard to interact socially. This means not knowing what to say or just understanding why we do things in a situation or how to relate to another.

What's the problem?
All a person with autism wants is to be accepted. That's it. Understand they have some oddities and differences and accept them for that, that's all they want. The problem for people with autism is they don't act like everyone else and frequently, and I mean FREQUENTLY, get rejected from social groups for being "odd" or seemingly out of place. This happens early on especially. Their conditions stunts their ability to learn socially which causes them to get cast out of social groups and prevents them from getting any social interaction, and thus, social learning and understanding.


Whats the cause?
Autism is a condition that occurs in 1 out of every 40 people. However, that statistic is skewed as men have a 5 times higher rate than women, so it's about 5-10% in the male population, maybe even more based on how you view diagnosing criteria. Autism is not a truly negative condition and is not an unnatural phenomenon. It's been around since forever and does have beneficial effects for some. Vaccines do not cause it and right now the US is having frequent measles outbreaks cause of this view perpetrated by legal criminals. Autism is natural and can cause a decrease in social capacity for an increase in cognitive capacity. Einstein is attributed as having been a person who most likely had autism, as did many scientists and inventors. Autism creates a good situation for creating men and women of science and alters how they behave. It allows us to advance in society through truly insane considerations the normal person just would not think of.




So, what does this mean for everyone here?

You know people with autism, you all do. You can't go online without meeting some. Just try to understand some people have different brain hardware that makes it hard to understand the social direction of others. Accept your friends for their good points and try to help them learn social cues and needs. Autism is not an excuse and it's not a disease, it's a person that was hardwired differently so that they can approach the world at a different manner. Human's are a complex species and many hate others for being any bit different, so people with autism do experience many hardships, but so does everyone in the world. The problems they face is that they lack some of the ability to pick themselves up the same way and these leads to more hardships.

When a person is different or has their own problems, just remember we ALL have our problems. Every single human will at multiple points in their lives go through mental disorders, conditions, and disabilities. We all age, losing our bodies and minds to time.

If you don't learn to accept others with problems, then what right do YOU have to be accepted when you eventually develop your own difficulties?