Here is a copy of the brief I submitted: Written Submission for Pre-Budget Consultations for Federal Budget 2025 By: True Taylor July 2024 I. Recommendations: ● Recommendation 1: That the government includes specific initiatives in the National Autism Strategy (NAS) to find, diagnose, support, and assist older autistic adults and autistic seniors . Recommendation 2: That the recommendations for the National Autism Strategy (NAS) outlined in the brief provided by the

This is a very interesting/insightful thread I copied from Twitter before the storm, in the 'how does this total stranger know so much about my life' category. Some of our conversation at the meeting Saturday reminded me of it so I thought I would share. Written by Dr Sam Porter @PerinatalBirder His Twitter profile describes him as " #Neurodivergent Consultant Perinatal Psychiatrist" and he describes this thread "Here’s a thread I’ve written for psychiatrists to help them pi

This article from The Guardian is about the UK but I'm sure this happens in Canada as well, maybe not as much because I think its more difficult to get diagnosed as an adult in Canada. "In recent years, the number of people diagnosed with autism has rocketed; a study of diagnosis trends, published in August, found the median age for diagnosis is 10 for males and 13 for females, and there was a 787% exponential increase in its recorded incidence, in the 20 years to 2018. " At

Autistic spiky profiles and positivity ! is about something called "spiky profiles" which is a term I was not familiar with but according to the writer its a common term in the 'autistic community' :) Although I wasn't familiar with the term, it is certainly a concept I'm familiar with"we are good at some things, bad at other things, and the difference between the two tends to be much greater than it is for most other people"from N euroclastic . Most other people referred

This article was recently shared on twitter. Are Co-occurring Conditions Part of Autism ? This was written by Max Sparrow It's a couple years old but I thought it was interesting especially when you consider the way autism is defined compared to what non autistic people often think it is. It talks about the many co-occurring conditions that autistic individuals may have and yet those conditions are not actually autism. But at the same time you're more likely to get a diagnosi

I was reading an article today that described the research by Dr Damian Milton on the “ Double Empathy Problem ”as the most important memo in Autism research in decades . I've mentioned double empathy before but I don't think I explained it well so I thought I'd add this interview with Dr Milton. "In this broad-ranging interview, Dr. Milton discusses the theory of the “double empathy problem”; hyperfocus/flow state; autistic parenting; the medical versus social model of dis

This is a summary of study findings from Florence Neville, an autistic Health and Wellbeing PhD student at the University of the West of England, exploring the need for autistic people to have alone-time. "Alone-time for autistic people isn’t really talked about in academia, but I know it’s vital for my wellbeing, and lots of my autistic friends feel the same way. So I want to explore what alone-time means for other autistic people." The researcher looked at: " Reacting to

There was a lengthy thread on twitter recently about autistic-specific dislike of phones. One of the replies was researcher Felicity Sedgewick who provided a link to this (free to read) paper: ‘Anything but the phone!’: Communication mode preferences in the autism community' The research explores different communication methods - face-to-face, phone call, letter, email, text message and online instant messaging, involved in different scenarios - accessing services, employmen

This article was on CTV a while ago. I think its very relevant to the other articles I've posted about double empathy and the effect on communication and social relationships. It was written by Tom Yun https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/a-unique-way-of-communicating-canadians-with-autism-share-challenges-debunk-misconceptions-about-autism-1.5387208 "Around one in 66 Canadians are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, according to a 2018 report from the federal government . Bu

I found this very interesting. The University of Edinburgh is doing a "Diversity in Social Intelligence" project "challenging the notion that there is only one legitimate form of human intelligence. Specifically, we explored social intelligence in autism, drawing together diverse findings to build a hypothesis that autistic social skills may be enhanced in an autism-specific cultural context: i.e. when interacting with other people on the autism spectrum." http://dart.ed.ac

This post further explores the complicated notion of low and high functioning autistic people that I posted about on March 27 "High Functioning? It depends: " and it also touches on what I was trying to say in "Are Co-occurring Conditions Part of Autism?" that I posted a few days ago, that there should be support for all autistic people as we ALL struggle. This is actually a twitter thread posted by A_Typical_Psychiatrist @AtypicalPsych whose profile identifies them as Former

I thought this was a fascinating article by Rachel Zamzow regarding something called Double Empathy. Very relevant to autistic adults...

This is an older entry but I thought it was very interesting and a good read even though its about children and not adults. DON'T MOURN...

Here is another great article about autism. https://neurocosmopolitanism.com/what-is-autism/ From "DR. NICK WALKER'S NOTES ON AUTISM,...