I don’t educate people that autism is not a mental illness because I want to distance myself from mentally ill people.

I do it because wrongly seeing autism as mental illness has many harmful consequences for autistic people.

#MentalIllness #autism #therapy #ActuallyAutistic

Whether something is a mental illness or a neurological developmental condition informs which support, accommodation, therapies, treatments, medications, etc. someone should or shouldn‘t receive.

Miscategorization of autism is harmful because of the consequences on those things.

The same goes for miscategorizing autism as a behavior disorder or other things.

Such miscategorizations lead to people subjecting autistics to treatments/interventions that may be appropriate if autism was those things but are unhelpful and often harmful because it isn‘t.

Here I specifically don‘t mean abusive things like ABA, bleach enemas, electroshock etc. that NOBODY should be subjected to.

I mean things that are actually legitimate for certain conditions but due to autism being neurological developmental they aren‘t in the case of autism.

Someone who sees autism as mental illness may subject an autistic person to exposure therapy to get them used to sensory input they are hypersensitive to - because they misunderstand it as fear.

Exposure therapy IS legit and can help certain conditions.
It‘s harmful for autism.

Someone who sees autism as mental illness may prescribe an autistic person psycho pharmaceutical drugs that could be appropriate if it was a mental illness.

Such drugs are unhelpful, and/or have dangerous adverse and side effects for autistic people. There is no drug for autism.

Someone who sees #autism as #MentalIllness may subject an autistic person to therapies and treatments like cognitive behavior therapy or mindfullness.

This often leaves autistic people unsupported, frustrated, believing they aren’t trying hard enough, labeled non-compliant etc.

Autism is not a mental illness.

This matters because categorizing it properly as a neurological developmental condition/disability is the necessary basis for providing proper support.

#autism #MentalIllness #ActuallyAutistic #autistic #AutismAwareness #AutismAcceptance