this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2024
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Ausome Memes
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I agree with the sentiment, but something being a spectrum, does not mean that everyone has >0 of it. It just means that people that DO have it arent all affected the same way.
Schizophrenia is also a spectrum but you wouldnt say everyone is a little schizophrenic, because they simply arent at all.
Yeah, it's a spectrum but the spectrum doesn't extend down to zero. You have to meet the diagnostic criteria, which is the floor for the spectrum.
I think a lot people hear about the spectrum and associate it in their minds with the gender spectrum. "Everyone is on the gender spectrum, so everyone is on the autism spectrum". Makes a kind of intuitive sense, I can see why you'd think that.
But the autism or neurodivergent spectra are more akin to the "male gender spectrum" or the "female gender spectrum". Yeah, everyone in those spectra are in a spectrum, but not everyone is included in those spectra.
This isn’t what a spectrum is. People who say “everyone has a little autism/adhd” are just wrong. Imagine somebody saying “everybody is a little pregnant” because people sometimes get nauseous in the morning and crave certain foods. It doesn’t work, you are either pregnant or not pregnant, and either adhd/autistic or not
That's actually very false, and it is important for people to learn about their mental well-being.
On the spectrum of mental health where the perfectly healthy are on the very left, and the perfectly unhealthy are on the very right. The majority of people lie somewhere in the middle.
Mental disorders are not binary, like being pregnant or not being pregnant. There is a sliding scale. How much that disorder affects certain aspects of your life is how we measure the severity of that disorder.
Nobody is perfectly healthy, but that doesn’t mean everybody has the specific medical condition of autism or adhd.
Never said that 😆 but ok