Well, the author loses me the instant that she throws mental illness under the bus. She argues for a position that spectrum disorders are "disabling" which would be fine-- but then she makes the statement "not mental illness," which would also be fine (as a means of distinguishing what autism IS, and what is it NOT) but to tie the two things together the way she does it just plain MEAN.
Those two categories are very definitely not mutually exclusive, which is an important point missing in the essay. I find it mean-spirited and selfish of her that she throws THOSE kids under her ideological bus. Life is plenty hard enough for people with mental illness, and no, not all of THEM can just "take a pill" either, as the author implies. They have families that love them and struggle to meet their needs, too. She just made it harder by making the comparison in an ignorant manner.
I know what she's getting at, and I don't disagree with her on that score. But I do object to her fairly nasty/sly implication that "mental illness" might well be both LINKED to violence/aggression and is certainly "not a disability like autism." I consider THAT a sad irony.
Just as ridiculous is the assertion that spectrum disorders are not "real" disabilities because people with mental illness are significantly more likely to die from a cause related to that illness. This is true, of course; it's just irrelevant and unhelpful, and it uselessly implies that the one thing is "more of a disability" than the other. Yuck. I hate the "more disabled than" rhetoric with a purple PASSION.
I feel sad and discouraged by the media coverage. I'm with Val (and Jon, and others); it's just too simplistic to see this through a single lens and with blinders on.
Those who are (predictably) using this as a personal soapbox are marginalizing other important elements here, and they aren't doing it for altruistic reasons, but for selfish ones. Even people who
seem to have the best of intentions are making this about THEMSELVES-- and mostly, about separating themselves from any "taint" of similarity as a means of reassuring themselves that it couldn't happen to them. That, too, saddens me.
"It wasn't because of _______" (guns/autism/giftedness/radical acceleration/broken home/bad parenting/mental illness) misses the larger issues here.
Or maybe it IS the larger issue that all of those statements are dancing around-- why is it so unacceptable to be
different in this country?? I think this is the underlying reason why such things keep happening in my country. We marginalize. It's what we do. We look for DIFFERENCES, not commonality. How sad.
