Another signal was a 2013 public apology by Easter Seals after it sent out a mass email using the disease frame: “On Tuesday, we sent you an email about autism and we owe you an apology. We called autism an epidemic and some of you called us out on our language. You're right. Autism is not an epidemic. Autism is not a public health crisis.” In the same vein, Los Angeles Times journalist Michael Hiltzik walked back from language that he used in a 2014 story. “I have been taken to task, properly, for referring to autism above as `a terrible condition for its sufferers and their families.’ That's a narrow and ill-informed way of looking at a condition that many people on the autism spectrum feel has benefited their lives.”
Simon Baron-Cohen weighs in at The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. The abstract:
Should we continue to refer to autism as a ‘disease’ or ‘disorder’, or is the framework of ‘neurodiversity’ a more humane and accurate lens through which to view people with autism? Evidence at the genetic, neural, behavioural and cognitive levels reveals people with autism show both differences, and signs of disability, but not disorder. Disability requires societal support, acceptance of difference and diversity, and societal “reasonable adjustment”, whilst disorder is usually taken to require cure or treatment. These are very different frameworks. It will be important to see how the concept of neurodiversity is applied to the 300 diagnoses in DSM-5, and if it revolutionizes both the science and the practice of psychiatry.
