Angela’s Reviews > We're Not Broken: Changing the Autism Conversation > Status Update

Advocacy and research has largely been conducted without Autistics.
In early studies a tiny percentage of parents fully accepted their autistic child with warmth and compassion. Instead we were objects of experimentation, observation, and parents often wished we didn’t exist. Autism became a personal concern, not a collective one. Preventing autism from growing with the growing disability movement

ADA was passed and changes to IDEA were made only in the last few decades. They allowed access to the same freedom that allistics take for granted. My diagnosis was extremely confusing. It was autism, then Asperger’s, then PDDNOS. None of it made sense. I was lucky enough to have support, but looking back I wasn’t taught anything about it, just forced into social norms and deemed normal once I hit adolescence.

Autism was first used as a term for childhood Schizophrenia, “Psychotic reactions in children”- until the symptom criteria became less and less.
Current criteria is mainly impairment in social interaction and restrictive/repetitive behavior
Umbrella term ASD replaced Asperger’s and PDDNOS in 2013
historically inaccurate identification with mental illness until IDEA defined it as a developmental disability

republicans, trump and overall ignorant people have put us in a box. they call us a danger to society and take autism out of context in regards to mass shootings and overall violence. this country keep trying to mitigate and cure our symptoms. there are so many myths surrounding autism that get tossed around by people who have no interest in actually getting to know us. and no. vaccines did NOT cause autism