"Mental health epidemic"?

Yes it has led to the psychiatring of normal stiff upper lip behaviour. Why does everything need a label these days. It's cos doctors do not consider they can ' treat' something until it is. Even normal behaviour gets researched and labelled.

It is so easy to diy diagnose your son or DH as being somewhere just inside the asperger spectrum. It almost comes down to - has any woman actually got a "normal" one?

No disrespect intended to anyone with a real diagnosis.

Interesting to see that the chap who first came up with this label, now wishes he hadn't!

I used to think everyone was somewhere on the spectrum. My daughter who works with autistic youngsters told me in no uncertain terms I was talking a load of bo rubbish

My son said something similar to me after he worked with a true aspergers sufferer.

No, of course not everyone is somewhere on the spectrum. But what the experts say is that all of us exhibit one or more traits of autism in our characters [which is quite a different thing.] It's only when a large number of these traits are present that an individual can be said to be be Autistic/Aspergers or ASD.So, we would all be able to identify some of these traits in ourselves, and when the ones that you have and the ones that your DH has 'come together' in your child, that's when you get the diagnosis . Many children are so borderline that it goes un-noticed, just a few quirks, but for the ones that are much more than that, their lives will be more miserable without a diagnosis, and they will feel out of step all their lives.Knowing why you feel like that helps towards coming to terms with it and doing the best you can. Up to recent years it's always been a hidden shameful thing, that's why you hear about it all the time now, it's out in the open. There must be a fair few adults who are now relieved to think 'ah, that's why I feel like this!' They are the ones that have managed to cope with life, but sadly [tragically] there are so many thousands who haven't.

We just did n't know about it when our children were little. To be quite honest, I think I could have got my son a diagnosis had I known. Not sure if it would have been a helpful thing or not. He seems to have weathered it, but there were some rocky times along the way.

Asperger's syndrome was only talked about in psychiatric circles from the early 80s, and officially recognised in the late 90s as a diagnosis.
Even the definition of autism has varied over the years .

Autism was known about when our kids were little. I can remember some friends visiting us, and their daughter, who was two years older than our elder son, would just run through the house from the front door to the back door and back again continuously. When her parents or younger brother tried to stop her, she would sit in a corner of the room rocking and screaming, so it was better to just let her run. She must have been nine and she could not say any words. She went to one of the first autistic schools in the country.

Full blown autism, yes. Probably not aspergers.

durhamjen that is classic autism [that you talked about] but there are more cases of ASD than that, challenging behaviour is one way of putting it!I feel for my poor daughter, as she looks after her little son and gets nothing back [I think of my own son at that age, and how loving he was with me, and I could cry.]Nothing back, except anger and awful behaviour. We all understand he can't help it, but it doesn't make it any easier.We don't know what his future holds, as we all can't be here forever to help him with his life.

When my children were born I had a very dear close friend whose children were the same ages as mine.
Her first was a normal girl - she and my first nearly married!
Her second was diagnosed with cretinism, which you don't hear about these days TG.
Her third, a boy, was definitely autistic, with the kind of behaviour Durhamjen describes.
The irony was that her husband (now no longer here) was a well respected Ed. Psych. A lovely man, and she too is a fighter.
The number of times I've counted my blessings.
Our 4th btw is a step-daughter. Also much loved.

Maybe this should be on Pedant's Thread but the title of this thread - Mental Health Epidemic - is something we hear about often. Surely we should all be happy if there was an epidemic of mental health? It is mental illness or mental ill health which causes so much heartbreak.

Yes, I take your point, wisewoman. Perhaps not the best choice of titles for a thread, but all becomes clear when you read what's been said.

It refers to it as a 'Mental Health Epidemic' in the synopsis of the programme, Wisewoman, so it's the Beeb being sloppy not GK.

...hence the inverted commas.