I guess you recorded before Greg Wallace claimed to have a diagnosis of ‘profound autism’ as ‘explaining’ his (alleged ) obnoxious behaviour. I don’t know how on earth he got ‘profound’ but it seemed to me the reductio ad absurdum of psychological diagnosis. Essentially you list all the strange and antisocial things you do, which a psychiatrist tells you are a list of autism symptoms, and hey presto you are no longer a strange and antisocial person (bad) but an autistic one (a sufferer).
It’s part of the long road of medicalising personality so that we remove moral judgments from people’s behaviour.
From a GP perspective; lots of people attend demanding referral for Autism/ADHD diagnosis; both are often confused and used interchangeably. They or their parents parents are often quite insistent. When finally seen, everyone gets a diagnosis, everyone; this might be in part because those doing assessments have learnt that failure to diagnose may result in significant problems with complaints (the NHS tends to assume staff guilty until proven innocent, multiple avenues of complaints, prolonged investigations); or because the diagnosis is entirely dependant on self-reported symptoms, and self reported symptoms may not correlate well with actual function.
Diagnosis is then followed by requests for reports confirming the patient's diagnosis as grounds for entitlement to special privileges, typically at work or in education (extra time for exams, deadline extension typically), also for Welfare payments.
The rise in diagnosis rates is really not that suprising in this context.
Similarly bipolar disorder, but that seems to have declined recently.
I think a lot of autistic children would enjoy collation therapy, where you just give them a bunch of documents and tell them to sort them into alphabetical order
I did wonder initially if private special schools were included in 'Other', but they don't *seem* to... 'The ‘Other’ centre type includes, but is not exclusive to, pupil referral units (PRUs), prison or hospital schools, language schools, tutorials centres, higher education institutions, distance learning providers providing part-time teaching only and private examination centres accepting private candidates who they have not taught, all non-DfE registered centres and unknown centre types.'
When I was listening to that part I was thinking there’s a somewhat less credible but plausible confounder, which is that wealthier parents are probably more likely to have children later.
I guess you recorded before Greg Wallace claimed to have a diagnosis of ‘profound autism’ as ‘explaining’ his (alleged ) obnoxious behaviour. I don’t know how on earth he got ‘profound’ but it seemed to me the reductio ad absurdum of psychological diagnosis. Essentially you list all the strange and antisocial things you do, which a psychiatrist tells you are a list of autism symptoms, and hey presto you are no longer a strange and antisocial person (bad) but an autistic one (a sufferer).
It’s part of the long road of medicalising personality so that we remove moral judgments from people’s behaviour.
From a GP perspective; lots of people attend demanding referral for Autism/ADHD diagnosis; both are often confused and used interchangeably. They or their parents parents are often quite insistent. When finally seen, everyone gets a diagnosis, everyone; this might be in part because those doing assessments have learnt that failure to diagnose may result in significant problems with complaints (the NHS tends to assume staff guilty until proven innocent, multiple avenues of complaints, prolonged investigations); or because the diagnosis is entirely dependant on self-reported symptoms, and self reported symptoms may not correlate well with actual function.
Diagnosis is then followed by requests for reports confirming the patient's diagnosis as grounds for entitlement to special privileges, typically at work or in education (extra time for exams, deadline extension typically), also for Welfare payments.
The rise in diagnosis rates is really not that suprising in this context.
Similarly bipolar disorder, but that seems to have declined recently.
When I worked in venture capital my boss wanted to recruit autistic people for the firm. I helped him learn how silly that was.
I think a lot of autistic children would enjoy collation therapy, where you just give them a bunch of documents and tell them to sort them into alphabetical order
Re: the 41.8% of private pupils getting extra time in exams - I *think* that the 'independent centres' referred to in the gov data (https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/access-arrangements-for-gcse-as-and-a-level-2023-to-2024-academic-year/access-arrangements-for-gcse-as-and-a-level-2023-to-2024-academic-year) includes private special schools for SEN kids, which by their nature would have most if not all of their pupils applying for, and getting, extra time etc, which would definitely bunk up the numbers. (My daughter went to one and got access to a scribe, extra time, laptop etc.)
I did wonder initially if private special schools were included in 'Other', but they don't *seem* to... 'The ‘Other’ centre type includes, but is not exclusive to, pupil referral units (PRUs), prison or hospital schools, language schools, tutorials centres, higher education institutions, distance learning providers providing part-time teaching only and private examination centres accepting private candidates who they have not taught, all non-DfE registered centres and unknown centre types.'
When I was listening to that part I was thinking there’s a somewhat less credible but plausible confounder, which is that wealthier parents are probably more likely to have children later.
Yeah I can see that too!