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Originally Posted by xmasbaby7  But you wouldn't agree that that is the case, for example, in the extremely high reported number of cases of the Somali population in MN, right?
As I understand it, the Somali families come here and see that their children have a startling high rate of developing autism once here, behaviors they never saw or were familiar with in Somalia. This is clearly an environmental trigger. Yet, there is probably a genetic factor, that makes a group predisposed to that environmental factor.
FWIW, I think these discussions become pretty useless because I think autism is such a huge umbrella diagnosis covering way too many people when there are different base problems that simply look the same in symptoms. There are strong cases of both genetic and environmental cause when you look on individual bases. Such a generic label without more specifics is a disservice to those families living with it.
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Actually i was unaware of the Somali case until right now. I read the link the other poster gave, very interesting. To be honest i think it is very likely that a genetic factor and environmental triggers, but it seems to be difficult to disentangle them. I remember vaguely a few clusters of childhood leukaemia which ended up being related to infection. Lots of foreign labour forces were moving into areas, bringing with them foreign infections, and the local kids immune systems couldn't deal with the infections, became malfunctional, and leukaemia developed more often. It makes sense that our bodies would be best able to cope with the environments which our parents were born/lived in doesn't it? Equally it makes sense that ADHD might never be diagnosed in a society which doesn't ask small children to sit still and be quiet and learn for 6 hours a day (bit simplistic but hopefully makes sense - i'm nak and knackered!
).
I find these discussions difficult really. I find it hard to think of my family "living with it" - "it" being my wonderful dad. My partner is on the spectrum, and to be honest i barely notice it, and it certainly doesn't present "problems" to me - it was what i found so attractive about him! For us what everyone refers to as high-functioning autism or asperger's is "normal" and what everyone else calls "normal" is not, not for us. We're not looking for a cure i guess.
I do question one thing from the article - a Somalian person said they had no word for autism so he doesn't think it can exist - makes me think of "schadenfreude" There are lots of other examples. The absence of a word in a language doesn't indicate the absence of the phenomenon that word describes. The article noted there was a huge stigma around autism amongst the Somali community, so perhaps that is why there is no word for it? Or perhaps it is just the hugeness of the condition and the diversity of the symptoms which cause the lack of word. We've only had a word since the 1960's, and it existed before then. None of the symptoms listed as autistic are suffered from by my diagnosed relatives, so it's hard to know.
- just what i was thinking!
