Ashleigh's Blog

This week's topic is something which is a bit controversial in the autistic community, given that not all autistic people agree on the subject. For this reason, I'd like to emphasise that this post is just my view on the situation and what I believe to be the most compassionate way of handling it.  When I was diagnosed, the psychiatrist that I saw used the term 'Asperger's syndrome' which is supposed to refer to someone who is on the autism spectrum, but considered to be 'high-functioning'. However, shortly after receiving my diagnosis I realised that a lot of autistic people don't like to use the term 'Asperger's' or high-functioning/low-functioning labels and this confused me, until I researched the origin.  Asperger's syndrome is named after Hans Asperger (see photo) who was an Austrian doctor during the Second World War and he was one of the first people to investigate autism and what it means. However, Hans Asperger worked closely wi

TW: self-harm, suicide, eating disorders This week I was listening to a podcast [1] about the link between autism, self-harm and something called 'alexithymia' which is common in autistic people and is basically the inability to identify or express your emotions [2]. In this podcast, Dr. Rachel Moseley reads out some statistics which were seriously concerning:  "Autistic people without intellectual disability are on average dying 16 years earlier than non-autistic people... One of the most common causes of death is suicide." "There's some suggestion that autistic people are 9 times more likely to die of suicide." "66% of autistic adults report suicide ideation and up to 35% report attempt. These numbers are really frightening but also unsurprising to me, given that I myself have struggled a lot with mental health issues, self-harm and suicidal thoughts and the majority of late-diagnosed autistic adults, and in particular women, that I have seen spea