❁
broadly speaking, biomedical protocols/treatments/etc meant to help autistic people range from useful to quackery
broadly speaking, i think the best way to distinguish useful treatments from harmful ones is to look at whether or not they stand to benefit the autistic person themself, rather than simply those around them.
while ‘quality of life’ is an incredibly arbitrary and ableist term invented by and for neurotypical, able-bodied people, it is true that if a treatment genuinely helps to improve an autistic person’s sense of satisfaction with themselves and their own life, and makes them more able to do the things that make them happy, it is probably a useful treatment.
the point is, i don’t think it’s fair to dismiss a broad category of treatment just because a more specific one doesn’t work; autism doesn’t exist as a separate entity, but autistic people exist, and our symptoms are incredibly multifaceted; some can be treated pretty well, and others we neither want nor need treated at all.
this is why my bottom line for the usefulness of a treatment is whether or not it does anything for the person’s happiness.
if someone is going through a treatment that makes them miserable for symptoms that don’t impede their health and happiness in the first place, it’s worth questioning whether the treatment is worthwhile at all.
❁
“Drugs” are not a lumped-together category that can be commented on with any degree of specificity. Specific drugs on the other hand are.
❁
People who want to alter their own mental state by ingesting a substance should be able to buy that product with informed consent […] what is called food
People who want to use drugs for that purpose and give informed consent should be able to buy drugs as well. That includes children. Minors can’t consent in the legal sense, but in practice with a truly caring parent, a little information and some yes-or-no questions go a long way.
The problem with psychiatry is the corruption and incompetence among the people recommending which drugs to take, not the chemical content of the drugs themselves.
Autism: Explorations 