You might also want to ask the National Alliance on Mental Illness, the biggest pro-sumer advocacy group for mental illness.
I can assure you that I spend most of my time in the real world.
I must admit that I do not read Psychology Today. However, the article seems to be making the same point I am. I would, like the author, primarily wonder about this whole discussion “[…] what is autism being distanced from?”
It seems to be important to you, and that’s fine. I won’t try to change your mind. You just have to understand that when you say “Autism is not a mental illness,” you’re saying something that to most other people doesn’t make much sense.
Yeah, that 6 million places are talking about autism within the framework of mental illness. You said that the real world doesn’t think of it like that. The internet is the real world and it does.
Now, if you go ask NAMI, they may say “yeah, it’s fair to call it a mental illness.” But they don’t go around doing it.
The point he’s making is that autism is not termed a mental illness, but that he thinks the reason is stigma, and that it’s close enough to mental illness that we ought to reject stigma and embrace it. Which is a nice point about the stigmas.
You need to understand that the language that people are out there using, especially in the autism community, doesn’t reflect what you professionals are using in your back rooms and papers, even if you are the ones who get to make the official terms. That’s all I’m saying. If you go out a speak to an autism group or something and call it a mental illness, you’ll get lots of quizzical looks and a few angry retorts. You can have this debate with them to if you want, but it will take a while to reach everyone.
Out of curiosity, do you think Brazil84 exhibits symptoms of autistic disorder or Asperger’s disorder, or is that the kind of thing you can’t tell from message board posts?
I’m sorry that you feel it is stigmatizing. People want to change the name “Mental Retardation” as well, due to stigma. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
Just so we don’t lose site of the real issue at hand, I wanted to leave all the other stuff behind and get back to this:
Please note the following: New Deal Democrat linked to a source that demonstrated that accounting for impoverished environmental factors explained the observed differences in academic achievement between African American and White youth.
YOU DISHONEST ASSHOLE:
From the same summary you (SELECTIVELY) quoted from:
"… (the researcher [Ogbu]) rightly observes that his study of “community forces” in generating the gap in student performance does not, logically or empirically, negate the possibility of “societal forces” also affecting Black student performance.
You know, NDD, I don’t normally do this kind of thing, but I think this bears repeating, in giant red letters:
Here’s the problem. You read something quickly and cursorily, and thought you understood it, but unfortunately, it turned out to mean the exact opposite of what you thought. Don’t worry; it happens to a lot of people. The section that you quote below is the introduction to the study you cite.
I can see why you found this statement appealing, but you *really *shouldn’t have stopped reading there. Here are the very next two paragraphs [bolding mine]:
You see, they’re providing context - results of past studies - in contrast to their findings. Just to make it completely clear: they’re saying, “In the past, studies haven’t been able to account for the entire gap… BUT OURS DOES!”
The results detailing how this happens and the conclusions the researchers draw have already been highlighted by Hentor and GIGOBuster. But allow me to draw your attention to one more crucial point: Why are these results different from those in the past? Why was this study able to eliminate the gap while others could not completely? Let’s hear what the researchers have to say [again, bolding mine]:
In other words: black kids now are doing better than black kids born just 10 years earlier. So much better that taking a few social factors into account now fully eliminates the gap. That means that either a) efforts to create equality of opportunity and erase prejudice are indeed having a very positive effect on new generations of black children, or b) all black kids everywhere suddenly and simultaneously developed the mutant intelligence gene, within a ten-year span.
While I have to admit b) would be totally awesome in a comic-book superhero kind of way, logic resolutely directs me back to a).