Laura Murphy-Oates introduces a bonus episode of our new podcast Guardian Australia Reads. Guardian Australia’s culture editor, Steph Harmon, recommends a piece by Clem Bastow about an unfair double standard on autism
You can read the original article here: If I wasn’t autistic, would my encyclopedic knowledge of dinosaurs be a problem?
Continue reading...Over 30 years since Dustin Hoffman twitched his way to an Oscar in Rain Man, our experts give their verdict on a season of portrayals of the neurodiverse, from Sia’s Music to What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?
A quick experiment. Close your eyes, and think of autism in the movies. I bet you’ve got an image in your head of Dustin Hoffman being driven by Tom Cruise in a Buick Roadmaster Convertible, repeatedly saying: “I’m an excellent driver.” Or Hoffman glancing at a box of scattered toothpicks and announcing there are 246 of them. Or Hoffman learning the phonebook to “g” off by heart in a couple of minutes. Or Hoffman doing miraculous mental arithmetic.
Rain Man was released in 1988. Watch it now, and it seems like a throwback to a simpler world where autistic people were geniuses, and no cliche about the idiot savant was left unturned. Hoffman tic-d, squinted and stuttered his way to an Oscar in a fabulously mannered performance.
Continue reading...Family celebrate success of campaign to halt deportation of 22-year-old, who has autism
A 22-year-old man who has autism and his family are celebrating after the Home Office abandoned plans to deport him to Jamaica.
Osime Brown, who left Jamaica aged four to settle in the UK with his mother, Joan Martin, was facing deportation after being released from prison where he had been serving a sentence for stealing a friend’s mobile phone, though he and others said he did not do it.
Continue reading...The neuroscientist and psychiatrist explains Zoom fatigue - and why the conditions of the pandemic can induce an ‘altered state’
The coronavirus pandemic has been a disorienting kind of emergency. It is a generation-defining cataclysm, but for many of us the day-to-day reality has been lonely, even dull. It is a call to action, but the most useful thing most of us can do is stay at home. Covid-19 is a disease that attacks the lungs, but it has also worsened mental health while causing a drastic reduction in patients seeking care for depression, self-harm, eating disorders and anxiety. Whatever path the pandemic takes from here, says Karl Deisseroth, the pioneering American neuroscientist, psychiatrist, bioengineer and now author, “Coronavirus has affected us all and it has changed us all. There’s no doubt about that.”
Deisseroth, 49, is talking in the lush, squirrel-filled garden of his house in Palo Alto, northern California, where he has spent much of the pandemic looking after his four young children. But he has had much else on his mind. He has been finishing his book, Connections: A Story of Human Feeling, an investigation into the nature of human emotions. He has been meeting with psychiatric patients over Zoom as well as putting in night shifts as an emergency hospital psychiatrist. And he has fitted all of this around his day job, which is using tiny fibre-optic cables to fire lasers into the brains of mice that he has infected with cells from light-sensitive algae and then observing what happens, millisecond by millisecond, when he turns individual neurons on or off.
Continue reading...Company says adapting recruitment processes for neurodiverse groups disproportionately affected by unemployment has led to increased innovation
Talking to people can be difficult for Rishabh Birla, but his last job demanded he did a lot of it. He has autism and finds making eye contact uncomfortable. For Birla, the rules of conversation are puzzling and he sometimes veers off course, alarming the other person.
A 25-year-old postgraduate, Birla had been working at a cosmetics startup in Thane, not far from Mumbai. “The job involved communicating with different clients to keep track of their orders. It was exhausting to interact with so people every day,” he says.
Continue reading...Prize-winning author Camilla Pang talks about her autism and ADHD diagnoses and her desire to challenge myths about neurodiversity
This month Camilla Pang won the Royal Society book prize for her debut, Explaining Humans: What Science Can Teach Us about Life, Love and Relationships. She has a PhD in bioinformatics from UCL and works as a postdoctoral researcher. Dr Pang was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at the age of eight and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder at 26.
Why did you decide to write this book?
I inadvertently wrote the book in my PhD thesis on bioinformatics, and my supervisor, bless her, said this is great, but it doesn’t belong here. One of the things people on the autistic spectrum do is organise our world in a way that makes sense to us using objects and sequences. For me, those sequences involved looking at the fundamentals of matter, and what that meant in terms of science. Even if I was just kicking a pile of leaves, I would do it repetitively in order to find the laws about how things react, and how they can be predicted. So from kicking leaves to Post-it notes to eventually reading about science, I constructed a map to navigate the world. Over time, it became bigger and notebooks piled up, so I ended up with a piece of work that I thought might be useful to someone else. And that’s the ultimate goal, isn’t it? You want to connect with people.
Go back to therapy and use the skills to better understand yourself and combat self loathing, says Mariella Frostrup
The dilemma I am a woman in my 30s. On paper I am bright – an Oxford graduate with a slew of prestigious qualifications, extracurricular achievements and a fairly successful career. The reality is I just feel pathetic, ignorant and gormless. I’ve got to where I am because I’m adept at analysing and memorising information, while clearly lacking other types of intelligence. I was bullied in school and continue to be bullied in adult life, which to me reinforces how pathetic I am.
I am very physically and socially clumsy, can’t understand body language, have trouble processing what people are saying and take things literally. This has led people to comment that I am autistic. I have never sought a formal diagnosis because I do not want to use it as an excuse or even a weapon, which I’ve seen other autistic women do.
Continue reading...The 18-year-old autism campaigner and international children’s peace prize finalist on why diagnosis of the condition for girls urgently needs improving
Each morning Siena Castellon synchronises her morning routine to music with the same 30-minute playlist. Different songs act as time markers. “The trick is to choose music you love and to listen to the same playlist every day,” explains the teenager.
When Wonderwall by Oasis comes on she knows she should be brushing her teeth. By the time Summertime Sadness by Lana Del Rey is playing she is walking out the door.
Continue reading...Other people’s lives always seemed more effortless, but it took my daughter’s autism diagnosis to realise why
Until last year I had no idea I was autistic. I knew I was different and I had always been told I was “too sensitive”. But I don’t fit the dated Rain Man stereotype. I’m a CEO, I’m married, I have two children. Autism is often a hidden disability.
Other people made life seem easy and effortless while, before my diagnosis, I always operated with some level of confusion. I was able to achieve a lot and I used to attribute this to the strong work ethic I inherited from my dad but now I have no doubt that he was autistic, too.
Continue reading...Research suggests 50% greater risk for children whose mothers report using cannabis
Children born to mothers who report using cannabis during pregnancy have about a 50% greater risk of developing autism, research suggests.
While the team behind the work said more research was needed to unpick whether cannabis itself was behind the link, they said the results were concerning.
Continue reading...With face coverings compulsory in many settings, people unable to comply for health reasons are being challenged and abused
In the past few weeks, Paul Feeley has been abused four times for not wearing a mask on public transport. “I have a disability lanyard, which signifies I have a hidden disability. I tried to show it … And all I got back was a complete torrent of abuse.”
The most recent incident took place just after he first spoke to the Observer on Thursday. The abuse has made Feeley, who suffers from fibromyalgia, borderline personality disorder and panic attacks, feel “extraordinarily angry, anxious and upset”. He is unable to wear a face covering due to his medical conditions, and legally he is exempt – but he is now worried about travelling on buses and trams in his home town of Manchester. “One man said to me, ‘If you can’t wear a mask, you shouldn’t be allowed out.’”
Continue reading...News Corp columnist accuses Australian Press Council of sabotaging debate and doubles down by repeating slurs about Thunberg’s autism
Andrew Bolt’s mocking column about Greta Thunberg, which referred to the young climate campaigner as “deeply disturbed” and “freakishly influential”, breached standards and was likely to cause substantial distress, offence and prejudice, the press watchdog has found.
The Australian Press Council ruled that the language in Bolt’s August 2019 article breached standards because it attempted to “diminish the credibility of Ms Thunberg’s opinions on the basis of her disabilities and by pillorying her supporters on the basis of her disabilities”.
Continue reading...Greta Thunberg’s extraordinary transformation from a near-mute 11-year-old into the world’s most powerful voice on the climate crisis is revealed today by her mother.
Related: Malena Ernman: ‘Greta was the child, we were the emperor. And we were all naked’
Continue reading...Campaigner calls out ‘hate and conspiracy campaigns’ after Australian’s attack
The teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg has hit back at the Australian News Corp columnist Andrew Bolt for writing a deeply offensive column that mocked her autism diagnosis.
The Swedish schoolgirl posted a tweet overnight calling out the “hate and conspiracy campaigns” run by climate deniers like Bolt, adopting his insult that she was “deeply disturbed” and turning it back on him.
Continue reading...Study aims to discover whether gut microbes play a part in development of the condition
Scientists have induced the hallmarks of autism in mice by giving them faecal transplants from humans with the condition.
The experiments were designed to test whether the communities of gut microbes found in people with autism have a role in their symptoms, an idea that is gaining ground among researchers.
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