philipo

the quote from a book that came out this year.The DSM manuals were origionally designed to collect statistics.What happens is is numerous American mental health proffesionals have a conference and offer a list of SYMPTOMS and propose a name or label,in time these agreed upon labels become a 'disorder'.In the last 25 years mental health proffesionals have re invented themselves with the aid of this manual and the drugs companies.It concentrates on symptoms and has nothing to say about treatment/causes.the drug industry welcomes it and how it creates massive markets to alleviate 'symptoms'.goverment health accountants love it because they know that drug treatment is much cheaper than 'therapy'. The real danger for as/asd/autisim is that the (d)isability will be reduced to a 'mental health impairment' and those with these kinds of problems will become guinea pigs for the drugs industry (as many already are persuaded to take drugs more commonly prescribed for serious mental health conditions) and that people who have 'Autisim' in its traditional sense will be seen as 'handicapped'/mentally feeble.the only thing i see positive in the new evaluation is the seperating of needs for individuals. The massive rise in the normalisation of tranqueliser/ant anxiety addiction says it all. In my medical 'care' home for instance alot of staff are very dissasociated from whats happening with the residents,a few of us have worked out that they are pilled up on amyltripterlene and unable to follow simple instructions!.They burn food,spend their time in the office on the internet all day and rarley talk to residents.I can spot most users of anti depressants as easy as i can spot potheads and junkie/methadone heads and alkies. In the day to day world people will be offerd pills,drugs to 'normalise' behaviour,not expensive therapy and coping strategies,that cost a lot more.... Remember ...the establishment mental health sevices still use ECT,without any scientific/statistical research.i propose that electricution or serious mental/physical trauma would have the same effect on a variety of 'mental illnesses'. Ironically...for me...receiving a head injury in a motocycle accident has 'calmed 'me down enough to understand my asd.The problem of the new DSM is that it's more an intellectual abstarction and not based on trials /research into as/asd//autisim.Meanwhile its comforting to many to accept a 'label' rather than think their way through.there are many advantages to a late diagnosis.Consider this.The works of a cocaine addcit called Sigmund Freud are the main basis of physcology.I'd prefer it if anthropologists and biologists were given more credance than psyhcologists as their observation have much more objectivity and provable science behind them.

Quote from Dr Frances,chairamn of the DSM 111 committe talking to journalist Jon Ronson when talking about diagnostic mistakes. "its very easy to set off a false epedemic in psychiatry, and we inadvertently contributed to three that are ongoing now"(Jon Ronson)..."Which are they?" 'Autisim,attention deficit,and childhood bi polar' he said.. John Ronson ...'How did you do it? Dr Frances...'With autisim it was mostly adding Aspergers's ,which was a much milder form'...'The rates of diagnosis of autistic disorder wnet from less than one in two thousand to more than one in a hundred.Many kids who would have been called eccentric,different,were suddenly labelled autistic.' He goes on to say that childhood bi polar does not exist and purports the idea that many behavioural diagnosis are for the benefits of parents anxieties. The DSM manual is a guide,and is not based on research or empirical data ,it's merely OPINION. It mainly serves the drug companies.

There's thousands like you,your certainly not alone.I have little respect for the medical establishment but have to logically forgive them as the subject is very new to them. getting a diagnosis is important,especially when younger.It will protect you from being misinterpreted by educational/mental health/employers.Im 48 and dx'd last autumn,I always put my 'non specific madness' down to growing up in Malaya as a child and then being put in care. One of the many good things about asd/as is that the ability to live day by day with extra stress/anxiety can protect you mentally from the ups and downs of life.If you have creative urges,follow them.The thing about 'mimicing' social behaviour is important but don't beat yourself up about wanting to be 'normal'.There's a lot more social pressure thesedays to go with the crowd and even more so for females with fashion/expectations.be yourself there's loads of pluses!Tv is not real life,its more like mass mental programming.Be yourself ,inside you there may be a great creative career ahead of you.

I get a bit obssesive about balancing and exercise.if I don't do it regualry then I have problems walking straight.What they call Tai Chi is good.It involves simple breathing exercises while moving the bodies weight form one side to the other its very relaxing on the mind,trampolines are good,but a bit dangerous.DANCING is brill!!!balance and motion. I was dx's last autumn at 48 so had alot of re evaluation about my life to do.One thing was very clear,balance had been very important and I relaised that's why I loved sports that involved balancing like Tai chi/tai kwando,cycling,mountain bike stunting,sailing and riding motorcycles for 30 years,and juggling.I was completly unaware how important balancing was for me.

Found one last autumn,or more like it found me.it was bigger than a 2 pence peice and two tone green/purple.I checked it out in a wildlife book which said it was southern Europe,must have flown to Lancashire on the high pressure weather systems.If they really annoy you you can step on em!I get black beetles in my tent so I usually catch em and throw em out.Moths on lampshades are the worst but occasionaly i find some beautifull ones and sometimes camp near purple weeds because I love 'elephant hawk moths'.They are Britains largets moth,purple and beautifull and their caterpillars are massive and designed to look like a grass snake to protect em from predators.Get a beetle/insect book and a magnifying glass Darkshine,insects are amazing and mostly dont bite!

What I' saying is a 'sound' is'nt just one sound and harmonics are generally ignored as 'unwanted noise' because it does'nt affect most people.or does it?Higher levels of background enviroment noise have a direct effect in studies done on heart attacks and anxiety. I've invented a few things when I was younger but laughed at by freinds/family.In the late eighties I proposed LED lights to save energy,1992 i proposed LED roadsigns that were solar powerd,laughed at.I did some engineering work on whats called a squashplate engine,laughed at,deisel motorbike,laughed at.Now LED lights are everywhere.the squahplate engine ins'nt except in refridgeration compressors. Your right about harmonics.To make a bypass jet engine quiet,I strongly suspect that all they've done is shift the noise above the normal level of human hearing.This creates 'perceived' quietness but vastly increases the 'harmonic noise'.I've only found aeroplanes really annoying since the introduction of the later 'trent' engines which use a much wider front fan. I have a few little inventions at the mo.One involves collecting radio frequency energy and converting it into samll amounts of electricity for charging small aplliances. Our general understanding of sound is a bit like our understanding of radiation in the 30's,we are completly unaware of all the ultrasound and subsonic sound pollution around us.sames true of radio frequencys.people are also unaware that half of the electricity used tavels through the ground locally and thats another avenue of research into mains hum. if you put a simple electrical testmeter on a human and checked for frequency the meter would show the human is acting as an electrical conductor at 50 hz ,i.e.the mains voltage causes humans to resonate at 50 cycles a second.Scientists say this is 'safe',yet like mobiles and wireless routers,hav'nt researched it and are not going to .The implications may cause a complete revaluation of our technologies.I think people with 'traditional' autisim suffer from it the most,especially unwanted harmonics.

I'm the same with clocks,old type tele's .The newish flat screens buzz far less because they have'nt got loads of high frequency transformers in em that resonate alot,also flat screen use about a fifth of the power so their main power supplies 'hum' (@50HZ) alot quieter. I've noticed a particular annoyance with things that spin and being a techie freak i've ben researching aero engines as planes really annoy me.i'm calculating the speeds of the front air compressor turbines at the mo.generally,to produce more fuel effecient and quieter aeroplane engines the size of the front fan is made much larger.i think theres a correlation between the turbine blade tips reaching just below the sound barrier.being further away from the central axis of the engine they need to travel a lot faster than older type engines.They may be 'quieter' in general hearing terms but I think they produce a lot more 'noise' outside the normal human hearing range. I reccomend normal headphones,especially closed type over tinny transducer types that come with phones and mp3 players.

Reccomend as much exercise as possible.Get the child tired and stop him napping in the day.

If left to goverment and vested interest groups I'm sure they'll say that the perfect jobs for asd/as/autys would be manual labour planting trees and digging ditches as they are not very mentally demanding and they wont have to 'waste' any money on unrealistic expectations.How many of us get a sweat on at work?At Remploy in Halifax they literally sweat all day.

Many pet owners are aware that their pets come running when they open a choc bar or crisp packet.Its because of ultrasound.We hear as humans between about 30 to 18000 hz,i.e.low to high notes.Kids are much sharper and hear over 18000hz.Animals especially dogs,cats,birds n bats can hear ultrasound.Whenever we open crisps or move plastic it creates a lot of sounds above our hearing.Another property of sound is that low sounds,i.e. bass,require far more energy to create and high sounds are the opposite.Low sounds .i.e. low freuency travel more omnidirectional from the source like ripples in a pond.High sounds become increasingly directional.A bass guitar low note for instance may use a 100watts of energy to produce a certain volume, ahigh note say a flute would require a quarter to a third.Sounds also have 'harmonics'.i think this is a big problem with 'autisim' and a problem caused by the mass introduction of electrical appliances in our homes and the introduction of mobies and wireless routers for pc's.My hearing seems far less able to automatically adjust loud noises to make them quieter,and sems to have a tendency to lock on to quiet noises and amplify them. Ultrasound is used to look at babes in the tummy.they use a 'transducer' to transmit the sound.As transducers became cheaper they started using the same tech to make speakers for mobiles,they are acoustically 'harsh' and produce alot of undesirable harmonics,but there cheaper to make than a true 'microspeaker. The post where the poster is asking about light and colour comes to mind.....A lot of the anxiety/stress may be caused by our technological enviroment.It may be that HFA is a tendency to autisim thats triggerd by our man made enviroment,sharing many biological 'symptoms' but not affecting communication skills,except through noise and light.i.e.I postulate that much ASD?HFA? is a result of technical enviroment,'triggerd' off.Its down to the shrinks favourite bit of brain ,the amygladia.I met a christian volounterr at a soup kitchen when homeless,I asked him what his job wa and he said he was an architect who specialises in buildings for autistic people,designed to reduce resonance and harmonics/vibration.Thanks for your patience.

Just checked Inndiscreet,its a bout 60%.Digital has the same problem as film.more than half the film emulsions are for reproduction of greens,and digital sensors have to use more resolving/processing logic for the green end of the spectrum.Whats knocked me back when coming home from the med is how green our country is.Thats why i never complain about the rain!. You van buy 'daylight' filament bulbs.They are designed for artists and don't produce a great amont of light for their wattage but help people with Sad,seasonally Affected Disorder and dont flicker at 50hz.The main problem with 50hz,i.e.flourescants and energy saving bulbs is that the 50hz 'flash rate' is within the optic nerves/brains parameter for detecting flickering.This I beleive is a big contributer to headaches/migranes,as well as noise in offices especially.The jury is still out on wireless networks and radio frequency resonance,but with the planned increase to 4G standards for mobile internet,which wants to increase data rates by a factor of 10 to 15 times present standards,is the radio/wireless signal will have to be correspondingly more powerfull,i.e.more ionising radiation from wireless routers/phone networks.

I worked for Remploy in Halifax for a fe eeks to see if i was suitable in 2001.The factory was involved in bookbinding and did a lot of work for libaries and some private work.I could'nt do it.I was un dx'd then an completly oblivious.I lived 20 miles away and got the bus at 6.35 to get there for 8.I had to walk 3/4 of amile from the bus stop.The main reasons I could'nt do it was because the severe pains in my legs got worse,the walking was the main problem as well as three hours on the bus causing anxiety.What was stark was how hard everybody worked.Previously i was working at Muller Yoghurts in Market Drayton ,we worked hard their.At the remploy factory the employees seemed to have a mostly physical disability.I was overawed at how hard everyone worked as if to deny their diasbilities and to prove to themselves and the management that they could work as well as non disabled people,they worked much harder than 'abled ' people i had worked with.It was sick,really sick,as everybody worked as fast as slaves under juress.I learnt a lot about bookbinding. different factories,Remploy ones ,will have different criteria but at Halifax there was no room for slackers,quite the opposite it was almost slavery,and the diabled workers worked much harder.So to find out the Goverment wants to chop remploy is brutal.I would propose making cuts in the civil service as most of them would'nt last one day at halifax Remploy.So it confirms what i've seen for years that the Goverment pay lip service to disability and are far more concerned about their unhealthy overpaid and lazy civil service.The holocaust contiues.

Most flourecants are actually flashing on and off at 50hz,or 50 times a second,new ones run at 100hz.With human vision,the human eye can easily detect frame stutter,so early film used 25 frames or pictures a second to recreate motion film.Older type computer screens used 50hz or 50 frames a second,well within the human eye range of detecting the screen flashing on and off,most flat screens run at 60hz and modern flat screen tellys run on 100hz ,reducing flicker and eye strain.While we perceive flouescants as 'white' light ,they are in fact very strong in the green spectrum,The use of 50hz is because of the mains electricity.It has 50 pulses a second and so old tele's and computer monitors were designed to be synched to what was technologically the easiest/cheapest method.Computer gameing has raised the bar.i think what was once called 'sick building syndrome' was due to the mental stress of flourescants,which was not very good for our optic nerves.In the last ten years many computer users set their monitors to 60hz to reduce eyestrain and migranes/headaches.If all screens were to be set at a minium of 75hz there would be less 'subconcious' detected flickering by the eye.The low power flourescants,as in energy saving type, mostly run at 50hz and so have introduced into our homes a background flicker and may have some influence on 'biological optical'stress. Although oldr type filament bulbs technically ran at 50hz,in synch with the power supply,they never turned off and on like flouresants do,i.e.they stayed mostly on continuously due to the heated tungsten fillament.The opererating frequencies i.e.50hz have an impact on the optic nerve but I strongly feel they have a greater impact on asd/as/auty 'rs and people with epilepsy, anothe rinteresting are ,although probably not related is that in old skool photographyi.e.film,to prevent camera shake and a blurred picture it was generally reccommended that the shutter speed should be set no lower than 1/60th of a second.i.e.not below 60hz. In digital cameras ,as well as old type film cameras,two thirds of the film,or digital sensor is devoted to processing the green end of the spectrum although we tend to think of red/green/blue as the basis of colour.faithfull reproduction of the greens is the hardest technicaly and certain film manufacterers concentrated heavily on this to differentiate their film from competitors.It indicates that our sense of colour is far more biased to the green spectrum.thanks for your patience.

I have the idea of including ticker tape text just like the news as thats what happens with words when people speak them,i see em crossing in front of my head on my internal 'telly'/visual awareness.trying to get people to talk on film is relly hard anyway and i'm sure people affected by this (d)isability are even more shy.the day to day noises of things are important.if i can let people listen to all the crazy background sounds they might realise who incredibly noisy life is.This thing about it being a 'modern' (d)isability has much relevance.The sounds of peizo sounders ,as used in phones,alarms,laptops emit a harsh mettalic sound and the masses of traffic on our roads and sirens,all to do with a big rise in urban and countryside populations,and the near constant sound of aircraft overhead,i think has caused alot of distress to many people who would i think would have otherwise gone undiagnosed/aware. While the 'medical' establishment seems to concentrate on the 'mind' as a major problem I really think that one big input is simple background noise levels.There was this thing years ago about people not sleeping because of hearing constant humming at night.Things that spin seem to be hard work.Most research on noise limits itself to the human hearing range 30hz to 17000hz(hz=cycles per second.low=bass,high =treble)but i think that ultraseound and resonance are just as important.Noise pollution maybe destructive to the amayglida bit in the brain. A big area that i have so little understanding of is traditional 'Autisim' but how I could include this I don't know at the mo.While being homless last year I met a few homless who did'nt do drink/drugs,obssesivly read books and were super intelligent but loners and odd but not nutters/mental health jobs,i'm of the opinion that these people have the 'curse'.although theres obviously so many positives. thanks for your replies and sorry if any generalisations have caused any ofeence.

I've 4 kids,eldest two twins 23 are obviously 'dyslexic' but ok socially,youngest lad is unaffected 14.second youngest daughter is clearly as/hfa 20.The biology/inheritence isn't a certainty at all but i do worry that many childrens 'behavoural' issues(which by definition includes EQUALY parenting issues) are being fudged by misdiagnosis and a readyiness to resort to chemicals,i.e. a nt/social projection of normalisation of behaviour.A small but significant part I beleive is the inability of teachers to have any time to work with individual kids,asd/as/autisim or not that would lead to making 'labels' to cope with school/pupil discipline.

I only managed self employment because my family did the books for me .I've dumped my familiy.After a few months of understanding the implications of my life /Dx and realising how self serving/exploitative my family /freind(fiends?) have been and taking stock of the thousands££££ of free community film/music work I've done,I'll NEVER work for cheap/free again. I am positive for the future now I understand whats been mentally crippling me for over 30 years and have loads of footage and ideas,Thanks for the bookkeeping help I'll just have to earn some money to bookkeep first!I do want to do a film on asd/asp/hfa/autisim .I have a few ideas but its staying on track,constnat reassesing that worries me with it and i'd like to include AUTISIM in its traditional sense and think that the film should be NON VERBAL,using text and audio sounds rather than the disfigured world of SCRIPTS. Thanks for replys Lyndalou x

To know that your not alone ,that many other sgare the troment/high perceptions and the avenue to (mostly) give other people some help/advice on what can easily be a very debilitating 'condition.I do worry though that many people 'affected' have to get to a mininum literate standard/technical understanding of using the net,I always try to remember the people who can't make their(inner and outer)voice heard,due to educational/learning difficulty problems.

Ive been obbsessed with light and colour since 3 to 4 years old,i spent a big part of my life as a sound/lighting engineer with a big sideling in photography/film/video.i always took the veiw i was just an obssesive creative arty type.last autumn I was dx'd and realised why!I'm 48 now! I used colour wheels in my living room years ago to calm my nerves and I always have colour with sound together.on holidays with my family I'd saty out of the sun while they were om the beach and prefer soft/darker lighting.Flourescants are horrible.After doing thousands of gigs I'd had many requests from people with epilepsy about strobes ,especially raves where a lot of stroboscopic effects were used.I used to be extremly carefull that strobe effects never run for more than ten seconds and that the 'frequency' of flashes was never constant for more than a few second.

If you ever need help ,like ,from the samaritans you'd do better unloading your problems on this site and its members.They are more understandable,accesable and at least you'd be talking to people who've more direct understanding. You did right to complain,I don't think the samaritans are qualified/experienced enough.Lots of their volounteers are just doing it to get on the mental/health/caring job market.I'm sure there's loads of good uns working for them but talking to the same person who knows your difficulties makes it alot easier. sorry to hear they upset you special_talents123

Posting removed by moderator FREE SPEECH WILL BE ALLOWED which takes us back to the chicken and egg conundrum 'who moderates the moderators'....but thats just semantics.

I stay away from television,and 'zone off' when stressed.The meditation thing only works for a short time with me.One of my best coping mechanisims is to physically go away from people and noise,usually woodland.After a few days I'm really calm but worry because i become non verbal and find it really peacfull. Its a sensory issue i think,too much sensitivity to start with compounded by too much anxiety to behave 'normally' when around others,many anthropoligists say that what sets humans apart from other animals is the much greater use of language ,perhaps thats the nub of the problem.i dont really mind talking but when people dont mean what they say or use language deceptivly then its not worth communicating. Loads of people have told me for years 'you think too much',but then again I would rather be me.the same people who say i think too much are always there to praise me when i use my experience and perceptions to fix their cars/motorbikes/computers/central heating/house electric/simple mamalian family dynamics.After my dx last autumn I took stock.Most of the people i once called freinds are just users and thesedays I'd have no problem letting them freeze to death in winter ,or stay broken down at the side of the road,or pay loads of money to pc world etccc.....serves em right,they think too little.

who judges the judges??,leadership means taxes. Overall i think the moderators are great and forgive them for being human and making odd knee jerk reactions.it must be a difficult job on this site due to its fundamental nature.And which fool would like to be a moderator and decide between a load of people who have ,to put it politly 'communication problems'. lets just hope none of them are state trained mental health staff. sanity,good taste,and appropiatness are very subjectives things,even with a nebulous DSM checklist..I once replied to apost about physical pain and insomnia then got a knee jerk reaction by someone who obviously had no idea about how it affects people over the years,let alone how to deal with it.I objected, i saw a bloke called HUGHEY going on about feelings of violence and was moderated,for many good reasons.i felt that it was'nt so much what he said but the reaction of moderators to what he said that seemed unfair ,but thats just an opinion,not a truth..then on this post i read a remark about 'punch in the face' but thats ok.maybe our litery skills of expression have a great effect.I always take a minute before going on this site and try to remeber all those who cannot write their experience on this forum. I am a mechanical specialist on a particular 70's classic motorbike and contribute a lot of mechanical advice to a bike chat forum.its a great site ,one of the uk's biggest,but the goalposts of 'appropiate content' are extreme.But when someone gets pulled its usually forever.

i think it got closed because of one of my many crass generalisations triggerd which is a shame for the origional poster.????But dont quote me.after all i've had no education and am not qualified to be grammatically literate,working class to boot,and not a member of the propertied class,in short insignificant non specific looney. Someones got to be authoritarion,and they usually dont get much appreciation for it,its probably one of the most thankless job ever being a moderator on a site like this,people love their binmen more ,some people don't understand that power is more about responsibility.thanks for your moderation.

I had trouble with essays.timetables,rota's, For art history and other essays they want you to quote and reference all the books and sources.it was a nightmare for me so I just made a list of all the books i'd read and when it came to essay time I'd hold it all in my head and write it all down at once in one sitting,this is how i do videos/film and music.Luckiliy i was on an art degree course so if anyone asked 'how long is a peice of string?' i could reply with an acedemic elastic band. You should be proactive with the diabilities dept ,they are very ignorant of the subject and the needs of the students.I left after 2 years as i was undiagnosed then despite numerous 'disability ' assesments and thought the course was simplistic,rote learning tat. Try typing in Salford Uni is (word that rhymes with hit) in the search engine box. Luckily for you you know whats going on now,so get(DEMAND if neccesery) all the help you can. In my first year I was up before the vice chancellor for sending my first e mail to the disabilities dept.The crime was saying that the disabilities were rubbish and calling the disabilities staff 'a bunch of saladdogers'.The real crime was that the word saladdogers implied the word FAT.if I'd have said Fat then Id have been thrown out staight away,ahhh languauge and aspergers!!I laugh at the mediocrity of much further education now and the pc obssesed drones.Stalin would be proud of em!

The ability to eat our hats and laugh at our absurdities allows us all to grow.I 'm still trying to understand 'emoticons', and all the 'lol' ' etc...its like heiroglyics to me,only had the confidence to start writing a few years ago thanks to computers,before that i could'nt read my own handwriting.thats a good thing about the computer typface ,the net and 'expression' ,for me much of the spoken word is useless as I'm mostly misinterpretedd and misquoted.