The same argument might have been made before women's suffrage, civil rights, laws around accessibility, etc.
Beyond physical laws, "the real world" is what we make it.
Mental illness doesn't mean "crazy person", there's a huge number of such cases, and half the population or more is affected by one or more (20% on any given year).
There's nothing insulting or damaging to call someone as mentally ill (except for types who think it means "crazy person" or some such).
In fact, there shouldn't be anything insulting or damaging about being bodily ill as well!
The bottom lime is that autism is associated with certain impairments that affect our mental states (on the spectrum, have a close relative with another mental illness). It's not some X-men like new state of being that people should aspire too, but it's something we should respect, try to heal if we can, and learn to live with and support.
Actually autism is officially described and classified in the DSM-5 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of _Mental Disorders_.
The rest of ad hominem, I will ignore. For one, I find the language insulting to people with mental health issues (even if one considers autistic people to not be among them), as if they're lesser people.
E.g. "They are going to wonder if I am a danger to them, and in turn, that mentality is going to cause direct harm and danger to me and other people on the spectrum." -- because people with mental illnesses are necessarily of "danger" to others?
>They are going to wonder if I’m going to exhibit symptoms of mental illnesses since I am autistic.
Well, they will be right to wonder it.
Even for the mental illness issues that you would agree to qualify as such (from depression to OCD), are commonly associated with autism, much more so than in the general population.
If you want to call Autism a “mental disorder” you would be correct to call it that, as it is a neurodevelopmental disorder and cognitive disability. It is not however a mental illness. The DSM V classifies a lot of different disorders, some of which are mental illnesses and some of which are not. Conflating that something being defined in the DSM V also classifies it as a mental illness when the writers of the DSM V were very careful not to use that language, shows the very misunderstanding which I am trying very hard to show you (and failing) at best, and intentionally misleading on your part at worst.
My objections are due to the societal biases that others hold against mentally ill people. My problem with calling Autism a mental illness is twofold. 1. It is factually and scientifically incorrect. Full stop. End of story. This should be enough for you, but whatever. 2. When you call Autism a mental illness you take a group of people who struggle and suffer and loop them in with another group of people that struggle suffer. Autism has enough social stigma attached to it already. When you apply more social stigma to it by attaching other labels to it, you are actively causing more harm than good.
It would be one thing to offend based on a factual argument, but you have neither facts nor a moral/ethical argument on your side. There is no reason for one to call Autism a mental illness other than a factual misunderstanding of Autism. To cling to that ignorance and claim superiority is both arrogant and egotistical. It lacks any semblance of empathy whatsoever.
Also, "disorder" is a more neutral word than "illness". Strictly speaking, it just means something is abnormal, not necessarily dysfunctional.
It's not; there's actually a medical difference between "mental illness" and "disability".
I had to be taught that but outside of that, most people who didn't spend too much time with me then think I am smarter than average and are willing to rely on me for help with some stuff. I am proud because Asperger's is related to how one's brain is wired if I was embarrassed or considered Asperger's to be defective it would take a toll on my mental health because then I would be thinking of myself of a defective thing and defective things are usually thought of as something that should be thrown out.
And sometimes the inability to see that the objective world that exists is not the same objective world that we see. Due to how the brain interprets sensory information from the objective world.
An example taken from your own text:
The reason that you are not supposed to tell a fat person that they are fat is cause by saying you are fat you are essentially pointing to that persons irrational behavior(eating to much).
The fat person does not want to think about their own overweight, it will lead to them start thinking about their own irrationality. Something that will then cause them to feel that they are a failed person, causing negative emotions.
Reality can be analyzed in many dimensions.
Anyway, it appears to be only a matter of time until there is a "provable" test for autism. See, for example: https://molecularautism.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s...
There are also observable (via fMRI) differences in the brains of people on the spectrum: http://time.com/3614487/fmri-autism-diagnosis/
Autism is the ADD/ADHD of the 'oughts. Overly diagnosed (come on, 1:55, really?), misunderstood (is the creepy guy who stares too much and never says anything a freak or is he autistic?), and often times used like a crutch by those who both want an easy out and/or don't want to take responsibility for their actions (oh, I have mild Aspberger syndrome and your offending me).
The notion of a "spectrum" is ludicrous too, how ever can we lump in someone who's a bit slow yet fully independent with someone like the above poster who's 8/10 year olds can't go potty on their own? This is a disservice to people on both ends of that "spectrum."
I'm confused by the juxtaposition of this statement and your preceding thoughts- it seems like quite a jump to say what seems to boil down to "Existing with mental illness at work and feeling like you have to hide it sucks" and then expand that to "People with mental illness aren't fit for the real world".
Who decides who gets to be classified as "apt for the real world"? There are a ton of depressed people out there, and for that matter, a ton of people who feel like they got screwed at birth for having the wrong color skin, the wrong sexual proclivities, the wrong family, etc. I think if you were to add up the people who feel like they've had to fight through a disadvantage, you'd find that they're the majority, not the minority of people in the real world.
In this case, regarding autism, it's called "spectrum" for a reason
Yes, it may be easy on HN to forget because we get a lot of "high functioning autists" here, but the word "autism" encomposses the 15-year old boy I met stuck in a wheelchair, whose only verbal communication is what I can only describe as a "bark" when something was not to his liking.
"Mental illnesses" do not top out at "a bit quirky". It is neither inaccurate nor insensitive to observe that some people are simply incapable of functioning in the real world. In fact holding the belief that there is no such thing can itself harm people by preventing them from getting the highly-invasive help they need.
That said, if we're talking about people who are in the workplace at all, we're not really talking about that set of people.
It's not physically incapacitating until you kill yourself which is the signal society sends you constantly.
It's pretty incapacitating.
My 5yo boy is officially diagnosed and he is really smart. My father was definitely autistic although never diagnosed.
I was lucky enough to have a false twin brother (11 months younger) that was the most popular guy at school while I was the weirdest (until I started emulating his behavior in social situations).
Today I believe my brain is just wired differently. Some of the most powerful structures in the brain (the GPUs) are devoted analyzing faces and reactions; in my case they are used for other purposes so I had to learn how to process faces using the CPU which is a bit tiresome but works well enough.
Some people do just fine, sleeping less. The issue is not listening to your body and waking when you don't want to.
I mean... the oddities that led him to be diagnosed included things like lack of eye contact and bizarre play habits. But, honestly, these are rather unimportant in the grand scheme of things, because the 'normies' were missing pretty fundamental, yet non-diagnosable, personality traits, such as ambition and conscientiousness
What society wants and signals to you constantly is for you to kill yourself because you're not worth anything.
It sucks to say the least.
Along with hyperfocus, a tendency toward honesty is another such trait. "But people without autism are sometimes honest, too" would be a comparable response.
I agree with the parent that you really want to think through the benefits of reporting a mental illness at work. How you will be treated depends on your employer, your boss, and the HR people involved in the discussion.
However as someone who struggles with a very real mental issue myself and has managed or worked with other people who do, please don't get discouraged like the parent poster seems to be. "apt for the real world" is not a static definition. If you struggle with mental illness, do your best to make the cost-benefit equation of employing you positive for your employer (and society). It won't be easy, but if you find an employer or line of work where you have the flexibility to create some guardrails around your mental illness in a way that allows you to create value, you will be surprised at what you can achieve.
20 years ago I was a failed engineering student who could barely pass most classes but did ok at and enjoyed practical coding. 15 years ago, after convincing a very good grad school that they should evaluate me on the basis of the actual code I had written and my GRE scores, not just my academics, I became a failed grad student who could barely pass many of my classes but enjoyed almost all of them and excelled at some. A decade ago, after dropping out from gradschool, getting fired from my first job as an engineer, and convincing a startup to hire me at less than market rate for a jack-of-all-trades sales-engineer type, I started doing ok and having a ball at work. Most of my colleagues would have told you I was a mediocre engineer, but I created enough value for the cost-benefit balance to be positive even if barely so. 5 years ago, after my painfully discovered role became a traditional desk job due to events outside my control, and I started failing again, I quit my job and started a business. My business has grown to several locations now. I still feel like a failure every day, because I fail at tasks most ordinary people would coast through. But giving myself time by being patient and persisting has allowed me to find a couple of things I am better at than most people and create an organization around me that makes up for my deficits enough to have a positive cost-benefit balance for the world.
Most people who work with me would tell you (and some tell me to my face) that I am simply not apt for the real world. And yet my business employs scores of people and serves a real need in multiple communities. I would have put the odds of this happening at close to zero at almost every point of time along my journey.
Accept yourself, but don't resign yourself to failure. If you fail, learn a little bit from that failure and change the next thing you try a little bit based on what you learn. Don't stop trying to create value for the world. You will find your niche. And, as that brilliant a*hole with evident mental issues said, don't expect this kind of clarity when you look towards the future, these dots only connect looking back after 5 or 10 years.
[1] cf "How to Fail at almost Everything and Still Win Big" by Scott Adams
Sure, but as civilized people and not savage beasts, we can accommodate them. In fact if we aren't already under some disability ourselves, we are still just an e.g. car accident away from being under one.
Perhaps you wear prescription glasses?
Asperger's Syndrome isn't considered a mental illness it's considered a neurodevelopmental disorder. There are many people who are neurotypical who due to circumstances will have trouble with handling interactions with the outside world I don't see why being on the spectrum should be considered something worse than being a person who drinks alcohol and then insults someone.
I mean, you show up drunk to work and insult people, you get fired - right? What's the analogy to someone on the autistic spectrum?
I dunno, I worked with a small number of people on the spectrum before and it wasn't like it required a lot of disclosure to get that.
After I was diagnosed and I invested some time into studying about autism, I realised that there is handful of colleges, who are most probably on the spectrum, but they have a really systematic approach on hiding shortcomings and using autistic traits to their advantage. Also I'm pretty sure I have collegues, who hide it so well, that nobody notices it at work.
I think it's better not to say anything and, if you wrong someone because of your illness, maybe tell that person in private and apologise. Unfortunately doing that makes it sound like an excuse.
I'm not saying I have a better solution. Some people simply aren't apt for the real world. That's sad but it's the truth.