Should We Be Looking To Solve The Problem Of Autistic Careers?

Forbes article by Nancy Doyle, Contributor. Organizational Psychologist specializing in neurodiversity.

Autism rates in the U.S. have risen from 1 in 150 to 1 in 31 children and 1 in 45 adults, which would look like a huge increase unless we apply critical thinking. Much of this increase can be attributed to three changes. The first is the inclusion of autistic people who do not have intellectual or learning disability (who may have been diagnosed with Asperger’s in the past). Second is that increased awareness means that those people are coming forward in greater numbers for diagnosis, whereas previously they would have been undiagnosed, and possibly in treatment for anxiety.

And lastly, many people who have learning or intellectual disabilities are now being diagnosed as autistic, when previously they would have been diagnosed with learning or intellectual disabilities. Indeed, in the 1950s to early 1990s, most children diagnosed in this way would have been institutionalized and kept apart from society.

So, changes to the diagnostic process explains the considerable rise, confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and undermines the very premise of the idea that we need to “solve” autism because it is growing.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert Kennedy Jr. has said, “These are kids who will never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem, they’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.” This statement ignores the nuances of autism, the overlaps with learning or intellectual disabilities and the variation in autistic experience.

Many autistic people are in work; many could work with some basic accommodations. And those who cannot work? Is it a “horror show” as President Trump has stated, or is this a reflection of the way we, as a society, have learned to only value humans who contribute to gross domestic product, rather than find joy in all of life’s variations?

Even if we work with this bias towards productivity as the defining characteristic of worth, we would do well to remember the benefits of autistic thinking. Exhibit A is the technology sector, which contributes nearly 10% of GDP in the U.S. and is staffed by a disproportionately high number of autistic people.

We have an epidemic of curtailed autistic careers, where education and entry-level roles have become disproportionately weighted towards people who are general all-rounders rather than specialist thinkers, where autistic people from well-resourced families can find a route into good work but those with societal and demographic disadvantages are languishing.

In previous generations, apprenticeships and local connections would drive opportunities for autistic people, who would become experts in crafts, trades, entertainment and more. Corporate rigidity now means that asutistic individuals have to pass annual performance appraisals with vague criteria such as “influencing skills” in order to progress, and eccentricity, unusual patterns of work need special dispensation. Research into accessible working practices would be far more welcome and useful.

Interestingly, in looking for “causes” of Autism, this investigation might find some answers to the questions of overlapping health conditions. Autistic people are disproportionately vulnerable to chronic health conditions such as dysautonomia, gastric and allergy disorders, which would benefit from a less polluted, cleaner food chain. Autistic people may also be more likely to experience bouts of long covid, where reviews suggest that good nutrition can reduce symptoms.

Beneath the grand statements and headlines, we see the actual project, administered by Health and Human Services, is set to include processing correlations in some very large data sets which might give us some insight on the impact of chemicals in our diet, in our clothes and homes etc. So inadvertently, there is a slim chance that this project which focuses on the environmental influences on human health might connect some dots which allow us to improve wellbeing in general, including that of autistic people.

However, there are still some curve balls to dodge, such as the notion that vaccines cause autism in and of itself, despite overwhelming evidence that Autism is a natural variation of human neurocognition, natural to our gene pool and prevalent throughout history. It remains to be seen if the project data can be decoupled from the dogmatic adherence to vaccine folklore. Karl Popper said, “Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.”

Irrespective of whether we can draw a silver lining from this cloud, for autistic people, cyclical calls to “solve” them as a “problem” is demeaning and dehumanizing. The focus on preventing disabled people from existing, rather than orientating research towards effective supports and quality of life has a disturbing resonance with eugenics. Trump and Kennedy Jr. are unlikely to solve autism. But the stigma perpetuated within their claim risks reversing progress on autistic labor force participation and the willingness of society to shift towards more accessible institutions.

The neurodiversity movement’s contribution to the world was to move our thinking about work from the industrial to the technological age. Where manufacturing requires homogenous repetitive human activity, we now need innovation and creativity, which flows more freely in cognitively diverse teams. This is an essential transition in our evolution as a society, as we grapple with the existential challenges of the 21st century and it’s unlikely that a regressive step will improve business performance.

Research on health and wellbeing is welcome, but we cannot design research with a sole objective to prove one thing. This is antithetical to science. Research on supporting families with complex health and disability needs would be more welcome. Research on how to design accessible workplaces that facilitate creative potential would be more economically advantageous.