Someone's URSA Experience 2022

For the past two weeks, I have been studying and researching Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and all of its facets. It has been fascinating researching and really diving into the many theories and conclusions that scientists have come to over the years. ASD has been studied for over 40 years, when the original diagnosis appeared in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 1980. ASD came to be known in 2013, where Asperger’s disorder, Autism disorder, and Pervasive Personality disorder and others were converged into the umbrella term of ASD. I focused my research in specifically ASD, and I tried to stay away from looking into those other disorders since they are outdated.

I started with the basics and took a dive into the symptoms and known facts of autism. ASD is usually charictarized by social behaviors and restrictive behaviors. Some social behaviors that are common are: making little or inconsistent eye contact, not responding or seemingly being uniterested in conversation, difficulties in imaginative play, and difficulties in adjusting behaviors in social situations. Repetivite behaviors can include: repeating words or specific phrases, being more sensitive to light and sound, and being intensly interested in specific topics such as facts or numbers. People with ASD are often very talented in certain areas such as art and math, and often can remember things in detail for long periods of time. The cause of ASD is not known, although there are known genetic factors that may be linked to a child developing ASD. Such factors are: having older parents, having a sibling with ASD, and having low birth weight. There are many theories on other factors, such as chemical exposure, but these have not been studied enough to be sure. A common misconception is that vaccines cause autism, but this theory has been proven wrong many times.

While looking into the causes of autism/ ASD, I found some correlations between ADHD and ASD and an overlap between ASD and Depression. I found two studies done on these occurrences, and the results are fascinating. The first study I found, on the comorbidity of ADHD and ASD, goes over the differences between the disorders, but also looks into the correlation between the two, and found that approximately 1 in 8 youth who had ADHD also had ASD. They also reported that 40-70% of children with ASD had comorbid ADHD. The study went over the many similarities and differences between these and went over why these are still separated. Some of the main similarities that were found between ASD and ADHD are difficulties in communication/social interactions and Executive Functions. The study also found that neurotypical children make snap decisions about other children with ASD/ADHD and do not continue to engage with those children, but they do this for completely opposite reasons, “The social difficulties of individuals with ASD appear more due to the absence of positive behaviors (e.g., social approach, eye contact) rather than the presence of negative behaviors [52]. Conversely, the social difficulties of individuals with ADHD are more likely due to the presence of negative behaviors such as interrupting and intruding on conversations [53] suggesting differences like social impairment across diagnosis.” Nonetheless, it was extremely eye-opening to read about how often these disorders occur with each other, and how much they overlap. It leads me to wonder how often a child gets a wrong diagnosis based on how much they overlap with each other.

The study on the correlation between Depression and ASD tells a similar story as the previous study. This study was conducted mainly by self-reports from two groups, people diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder, and people diagnosed with ASD. Unsurprisingly again, the symptoms were found to overlap significantly, and it was also found that adults with ASD often have worse depression and have more feelings of sadness and stress than the other group. This can be due to several reasons, the biggest one being that adults with ASD often feel socially inept, and have a much harder time communicating and interacting with other people due to their autism. They also studied two phenomena of ‘worry’ and ‘mastery’. Worry is described as a dysfunctional cognitive emotion regulation strategy for dealing with stressors. Mastery is described as the extent individuals consider that they are in control of their own lives. The study mentions another study on worry in autistic adults, ” In one study, it was reported that worry is (moderately) correlated with autistic traits (r = 0.34; Liew et al., 2015). In another study, it was shown that autistic adults’ perceived control over stimuli impacts their reported sensory sensitivity (Robertson & Simmons, 2015). Especially, how stressful one perceives life, that is, how difficult to master and cope with life’s stressors, seems to have an impact on quality of life of autistic adults”. Mastery has not yet been studied in autistic adults, which is very surprising. The results of these tests showed that the depression group reported more autistic traits, more worry, and less mastery than the same-age control group. This shows that there is indeed a strong relationship between depression and autism, as the study expected.

One piece of my research took a darker turn, as while I was researching autism and organizations that research and try to help those with ASD, I found an organization called Autism Speaks. This organization was founded by the grandparents of an autistic child, who wanted to fund research and spread awareness of the disorder. Though they may have started with good intentions, they, unfortunately, took a wrong turn down the line and now are known for their bad promotions and fear-mongering videos. One such video, titled ‘I am Autism’, is set up in a similar way that horror movies are and paints a bleak picture of autistic children and people. The founder, Bob Wright, has also supported anti-vax protestors and propaganda, stating that ‘there is no definitive answer’ when speaking on whether vaccines cause autism or not. This only spread more misinformation on vaccines and autism, which is the exact opposite of what this organization was built for. A video series on youtube is available on Autism Speaks, chronicling much more than what I described here. The series also covers other groups that spread misinformation and one group that even supports drinking bleach as a cure for autism and other mental disorders. Most of the information in these videos is extremely disturbing, so I chose not to write about it. However I reccomend watching and sharing this information, as I feel it is very important that I put the word out about this organization so more people know to not support Autism Speaks.

Even though my research took many turns where some were darker than others, this was still extremely fascinating to learn about. I intend to learn much more about ASD, as there is so much to learn and more to discover. This research also helped me discover things that I had never really thought about. It was interesting to learn about this and I hope that I can apply what I have learned to my social and professional life.

More to come soon,

-Chloe