The Standard Review

Medicine for Social Anxiety

In order to market a product a desire for the product needs to be developed. Business today is much more about either establishing that desire or following the already established trend. Marketing practical products by appealing to people's need to have basic security is more difficult and less profitable.

The market driven unhealthy competition encouraged in most social situations creates anxiety that can be very advantageous to the industry that provides the products to help with that anxiety but most people are ultimately hurt by these enterprises. Their welfare is of little concern to these businesses because they worry about money now rather than long term security. What they have now gives them leverage for creating a future and marketing trends are difficult to anticipate.

A commercial on television for psychiatric drugs so clearly describes to me the creation of social anxiety, which then provides the product for the relief. The commercial targets people who are alone and yet not wanting to be by showing the pleasant social interaction in contrast. The voice at some point during the advertisement becomes more monotone as they describe the side effects of these drugs. They of course say nothing about the population of people using the drugs having a 25 year less life expectancy, the lack of research and efforts to make the drugs safer, nor do they mention how the drugs are tested first on the people who are least able afford them.

Using drugs, which lighten the physical and mental distress of social situations that are not directly controlled the FDA are considered by psychologists to be self-medicating drugs. Psychology is an industry who works together with the pharmaceutical industry to define normal vs. abnormal and then treats the deficits they define.

The drug industry, however, is showing no responsibility in association with this control.

This is a very interesting article: The Truth About the Drug Companies

Concerning US health care it says:

Drugs are the fastest-growing part of the health care bill—which itself is rising at an alarming rate. The increase in drug spending reflects, in almost equal parts, the facts that people are taking a lot more drugs than they used to, that those drugs are more likely to be expensive new ones instead of older, cheaper ones, and that the prices of the most heavily prescribed drugs are routinely jacked up, sometimes several times a year.

AND later it says this:


Furthermore, in one of the more perverse of the pharmaceutical industry's practices, prices are much higher for precisely the people who most need the drugs and can least afford them. The industry charges Medicare recipients without supplementary insurance much more than it does favored customers, such as large HMOs or the Veterans Affairs (VA) system. Because the latter buy in bulk, they can bargain for steep discounts or rebates. People without insurance have no bargaining power; and so they pay the highest prices.

AND:

But while the rhetoric is stirring, it has very little to do with reality. First, research and development (R&D) is a relatively small part of the budgets of the big drug companies—dwarfed by their vast expenditures on marketing and administration, and smaller even than profits. In fact, year after year, for over two decades, this industry has been far and away the most profitable in the United States. (In 2003, for the first time, the industry lost its first-place position, coming in third, behind "mining, crude oil production," and "commercial banks.") The prices drug companies charge have little relationship to the costs of making the drugs and could be cut dramatically without coming anywhere close to threatening R&D.

Second, the pharmaceutical industry is not especially innovative. As hard as it is to believe, only a handful of truly important drugs have been brought to market in recent years, and they were mostly based on taxpayer-funded research at academic institutions, small biotechnology companies, or the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The great majority of "new" drugs are not new at all but merely variations of older drugs already on the market. These are called "me-too" drugs. The idea is to grab a share of an established, lucrative market by producing something very similar to a top-selling drug. For instance, we now have six statins (Mevacor, Lipitor, Zocor, Pravachol, Lescol, and the newest, Crestor) on the market to lower cholesterol, all variants of the first. As Dr. Sharon Levine, associate executive director of the Kaiser Permanente Medical Group, put it,

   


             "If I'm a manufacturer and I can change one molecule and get           another twenty years of patent rights, and convince physicians to prescribe and consumers to demand the next form of Prilosec, or weekly Prozac instead of daily Prozac, just as my patent expires, then why would I be spending money on a lot less certain endeavor, which is looking for brand-new drugs?[4] "





The me-too market would collapse virtually overnight if the FDA made approval of new drugs contingent on their being better in some important way than older drugs already on the market. Probably very few new drugs could meet that test. By default, then, drug companies would have to concentrate on finding truly innovative drugs, and we would finally find out whether this much-vaunted industry is turning out better drugs. A welcome by-product of this reform is that it would also reduce the incessant and enormously expensive marketing necessary to jockey for position in the me-too market. Genuinely important new drugs do not need much promotion (imagine having to advertise a cure for cancer).

A second important reform would be to require drug companies to open their books. Drug companies reveal very little about the most crucial aspects of their business. We know next to nothing about how much they spend to bring each drug to market or what they spend it on. (We know that it is not $802 million, as some industry apologists have recently claimed.) Nor do we know what their gigantic "marketing and administration" budgets cover. We don't even know the prices they charge their various customers. Perhaps most important, we do not know the results of the clinical trials they sponsor—only those they choose to make public, which tend to be the most favorable findings. (The FDA is not allowed to reveal the results it has.) The industry claims all of this is "proprietary" information. Yet, unlike other businesses, drug companies are dependent on the public for a host of special favors—including the rights to NIH-funded research, long periods of market monopoly, and multiple tax breaks that almost guarantee a profit. Because of these special favors and the importance of its products to public health, as well as the fact that the government is a major purchaser of its products, the pharmaceutical industry should be regarded much as a public utility.

Autism Speaks is an excellent example of how industry is making decisions about autistics without autistics. The charity Autism Speak's demands are consistent with how the drug industry creates profits. However, with what I am reminded of in this article, the drug industry that is tied to psychology industry is not only deciding who we are and how we should act (along with how we are acting wrong), but they are designing what and how we think in ways that serve the industry's welfare.

Of course allowing industry to design and implement a behavioral modification program such as ABA/PBS in public schools and other institutions where people have been diagnosed as behaviorally unfit would give a great deal of authority to that industry. People need to be very careful before allowing that industry to assume such authority.

We all aren't going to be politicians and political policy is decided by industry profits in ways that will lesson our rights. Autistic people aren't being heard and our exclusion is based on the same standards that have always excluded us. It's impossible to judge each other by mainstream standards that ultimately exclude us and rise above those standards at the same time. Either we change the standards, or we won't fit. The compromises aren't practical.

Determining the Future of Aspergers and Attacking Character

This is the link to a story about the future of Aspergers.

The industry of psychology has been encouraged by parents seeking learning accommodations for their children and adults searching for answers to why people behave improperly.

Society can't be very accommodating when industry and the politics that support it are dependent on showing the worth of products and people at the expense of defining products and people that are worthless.

These comparisons are often justified by claiming that this is instead a competition to find what is best and what is true. Unfortunately, that alone wouldn't stimulate the economy. Therefore, comparisons are made without the necessity for any of them being ethical or good. It is only important that something or someone is described as bad so that something or someone else appears better and can therefore, be marketed.

Thinking as it relates to either pathology, mental illness, learning disability, or neurological impairment has always been described by the degree of impairment as it relates to the fleeting, unrealistic, and unattainable definition of normal and is supposedly used to define whether someone needs nothing but care or is in need of (or able to receive) some type of therapy.

Due to the market driven mentality that creates these comparisons based on nothing more than popularity, different degrees of impaired thinking can only be given so much aid. If the solution to the problem ever becomes too attainable people will see the true goals of the industry and their stock will plummet.

In whatever way that Aspergers is now used to define a higher functioning level of autism a similar word or diagnoses will ultimately replace that word if it's taken away. We who are attempting to better define a social model for autism are fighting against an industry and a mindset that the industry uses to create profits. Politics is an extension of industry so the same exclusionary and discriminatory methods are used there as well.

In order to create a product/person that people will buy a determination must be made of what people don't want and how to get people to invest in preventing or fixing what is considered to be the problem. In psychology this product is basically defined as abnormal.

The two leading industries who make decisions about autism are the must-be-cured/must-be-fixed disease model and the behavioral deficit model defined by ABA/PBS etc. Most of the decisions I see being made in politics will create profits for one of those industries.

Like all other definitions of thinking impairments, it will not be profitable to encourage "treatment"to this population based on their impaired skills. People don't typically buy based on practicality but rather on emotion and impulse. Peoples character needs to be suspected for people to get emotional enough so they will buy something. If people believed that people were being mistreated based on their level of skill, they would see the injustice more clearly and work to end it. Therefore, the marketing campaigns are designed to describe the spectrum of skills as a spectrum of moral character as it can be associated with appropriate behavior.

Claiming that people are diseased and can't help what they're doing, people are misbehaving and need to have that misbehavior treated, and people are too lacking in self-awareness and empathy to be given respect, makes up a lot of how people are characterized and dishonored by the psychology industry, and it provides the justification for the neglect and abuse.

The most important way I can think of to encourage the respect of autistic people is to expose how the industry's are profiting by using the most convenient and effective way they know to assign what they claim is our deficit of skills an association between that and ugly stereotypes about our character.

In order for people to encourage autistic people they/we need to get away from the unfair commercially driven standards which are used as reasons for treating this population so badly.

Ghosts Matter; Autistic Inclusion

There are many reasons that so many people in our society are silent or are hidden. As I have written about in previous posts one of the reasons for this is that forms of media, which are considered mainstream encourage a narrow set of unattainable elite standards, which encourages people to want to achieve what they can't and are reminded of how they are seen as unimportant until they do. However, the main reason for this group's exclusion (which most other reasons can be attributed to) is the lack of encouragement.

It's not just that this population is fed a constant stream of images, which reminds them of what it takes to be considered important but everyone else in their environment is fed the same. This is how people draw conclusions about themselves as well as how they judge and often discount others. Oppression is most easily achieved when the oppressed accept standards that can be used to discount each other.

I'm glad that something I say on the internet sometimes seems to be important to others. If I was required to say these things by being directly in front of someone rather than writing them (even if I could string words together) many things about my appearance and my presentation would remind people of how unimportant my thoughts were. I have found though that there is enough lacking in how I present myself on the Internet also which reinforces the same standards.

I have heard that even the Internet may become much more exclusive soon. It seems to me that it would of course become that way. This means that more of a financial investment would be required to have a website that the general public can access. This means that this medium (the Internet) will become more exclusive, more commercial, and the commercial interests of those who run the websites will demand the same typical unattainable and exclusionary standards of those who present their message.

I don't believe that anyone ever thought that the Internet would be used much as a tool for liberating oppressed minorities. To whatever degree it has been used in this way I imagine this window of opportunity is quite limited by time.

I'm very appreciative of others who have spoken up on the internet before me about the things that I feel are important and those who continue to do so. I especially appreciate when they've done so in an environment where it wasn't popular.

What is considered truth and even the so-called facts that we use to determine what is logical are tainted by a set of values, which excludes the worth of most people.

At times when I was hospitalized, I would see someone who was being treated badly by a staff member fighting back in a quite unfashionable manner. I look back at that now, and I consider that to be advocacy. The only place that advocacy may have really changed things is in the mind and heart of the person who is being abused by helping them to realize that they didn't deserve to be treated that way. However, now for those who read what I write I can tell you that you also benefit from what those patients did because what I saw ultimately affects what I write. It also affects why I write.

Too often I hear people speaking of solutions to oppression by means, which are less-than-radical when they aren't considering how unreasonable that it is to expect in some places and by some people based on how they have been treated, and what they have been taught about their personal worth. If we wait until everyone meets the typical standards for expressing themselves before they are listened to those standards will continue to become narrower as will our version of the truth.

Whatever I have felt I needed to do to get heard is something that I hope others won't need to do. All the abilities I have, which are the result of extreme pressure and abuse (which pretty much includes all of them) are worth very little to me except for how I'm able to protect myself and others.

I appreciate hearing comments on blogs from people who are speaking up and speaking out more than I do from what is otherwise considered a formally educated opinion.

The autistic people that aren't being heard right now are most likely not formally educated nor do they most likely appear fashionable. Sometimes they are people who have put up the worst shit and told more often and more strongly than anyone, of how they are viewed by society as worthless. Typical standards are not likely to encourage these people and adhering to those standards is not likely to encourage them to begin to feel empowered and to speak out.

Without what I am suggesting autistic people will have a few (or only one) political groups with very narrow views who speak on our behalf and those groups will not be required to accept much if any alternative opinions.  Like most political groups the objective will be pragmatic and momentum will be protected at any costs to the population being advocated for. Autistic people will continue to be divided between the high functioning token performers and the low functioning who are considered to deserve pity and treatment by whatever means necessary.We will have one monopolizing commercial method of control used by schools (sometimes referred to as  educational supports) and all other public institutions which will define us as behaviorally challenged and will set and change the rules at will by which we are restrained and punished.  We will need to qualify our every statement and refer to how it qualifies as valid based on the statements of celebrities whose accomplishments set the standards by which we are judged.

This is the future I want to avoid. Autistics just like all minorities need to speak out with whatever means they have available. Even more importantly I hope those who can see how these voices have been suppressed will be encouraged to find more ways to include them. The standards and values we show appreciation for are what will determine our future and the typical standards we have now were not created with these voices in mind.Our inclusion won't be created without work, and if we want a society that includes more people we need to include those who are now excluded in the decision of what the society we hope for will look like.

Supporting Your Own Oppression

(I am posting this video here again because it is so representative of so much that I want to discourage, and I'm discussing it again in this post)

Autistics Speak Video

Obviously there certainly is a great deal of new thinking about autism that is very important.The problem is that the exclusivity and ablest views that have made teaching others to respect autistic people so difficult are too often being blatantly (and even proudly) reinforced by those who claim to be advocating for us. The video is an example of that.

ABA should never be confused with what neurodiversity is. That doesn't mean that anyone who agrees with one can never agree with something about the other, but they are contradictions. Neurodiversity means liberating people who think differently by discouraging exclusive standards. ABA endorses a brand of psychology that demands a type of hierarchical standard of behavior that compliments what autistics are typically not. The video does the same thing but glorifies an even broader and even more exclusive set of typical standards.

The goal of ABA is normalization or the promotion of societal standards. It is often mistaken as an educational approach. It is not and because it's popular to call it that doesn't make it true. It is the presumption of behaviorists that all human actions can be categorized as behavior. The idea that "When you're a hammer, everything can look like a nail" describes a marketing technique that is used by the industry of ABA. If all actions can be described as behavior then each behavior can be judged by how a behaviorist defines it.

With enough power companies are able to create demands rather than just catering to the demands that already exist. Wherever there are few or no regulations a company can prey on peoples fear and insecurity by displaying images and sound that show that if they don't look or act the way that the purchase of their product will better enable them to then society will exclude them and severely devalue their existence.

What's the difference between the term behavior modification and the term manipulation to promote exclusive standards? The answer is that the difference is that the term manipulation to promote exclusive standards is not as effective at promoting ABA.

You see misunderstood or alternate forms of expression are how ABA is shown to be less valuable so the standard expressions they promote must be very narrow and must appeal to peoples emotion rather than reason in order to sell the ABA product.

A product that is used to control others is much easier to market than one that takes time and effort to understand and encourage people. This is how impulse fear-based buying is promoted.That is part of the frantic lifestyle of the modern society that considers itself sophisticated and how fear-based marketing is justified. Psychology as something that claims to aid people in countering their dysfunctions often has a built in justification for products that can be of used to control and herd groups of people. Ridding yourself or your children of what society views as dysfunctional is very fashionable and the over-emphisis is often very destructive.

Of course this is the way that the brand of psychology known as behaviorism was bought by public schools and the schools have further justified this controlling "psychological" tool by describing it as "educational support". This controlling tool aids teachers as well as further allows them to better herd children, exclude many of them by glorifying a narrow set of typical standards, and justify how they continue to not take the time and effort to understand and empower unique expressions and unique individuals.

Once a company is resourceful and powerful enough to create a demand rather than find one to fill the cycle that leads to them having more resources and power will include political backing and the right to use pseudoscience to prove what doesn't exist otherwise.

All this begins by selling people on a narrow set of exclusive standards that can then be used to control them. Unregulated commercialism sells people on the idea that a narrow set of exclusive standards is how people should be controlled by encouraging them to have aspirations that promote products and corporations who then buy their rights and liberties.

The ABA supporters who made this film not only showed their support for a set of values that inspire this type of oppressive and exclusionary elitism and ableism by the way the film was made, but they stated clearly in words that the marketing means they were using were justified by what they hoped would be the result. Claiming that the ends justify the means is a short term impulsive emotional decision at the expense of the long term more important but more complicated goal.

As a political group ASAN who is aspiring to advocate for the neurodiversity movement (who has also shown their support for ABA )and who helped to make and promote this video needs to be careful of how they might promote ableism so as not to offend the broader disability community to which autistics belong. It's important that they show a willingness to understand the views of as broad of population of disabled people as possible so that it doesn't appear that their political aspirations as a group outweighs the needs of the people they aspire to be helping (since so many other political groups are doing just that).In other words, it's important to show that you are not impulsively claiming that the end justifies the means at the expense of those you're advocating for.

Behavior modification has always been a tool used in marketing to create demands for products and services that the public would not otherwise see a need for. The more sophisticated marketing techniques become the less subtle they need to be. That's how behavior modification and conditioning works. Once the demand has been established for a particular product or service the marketing means don't need to be nearly as subtle for people to accept them and the values that are being sold along with the product or service (no matter how corrupting) don't require nearly as much justification.

The following comment by Sadderbutwisergirl on my last post concerning this video put so much of what believe in so few of her own excellent words:

"Sadderbutwisergirl said...
Vector: The whole point of this post is that the Rethinking Autism people are speaking up for neurodiversity, which is a good thing, but they're only using people who can be confident, sexually appealing actors for the video to spread their message. It's a few non-autistics speaking for a large population of autistics who have lots of needs. You could argue that they don't want to stereotype autistics as being less than confident, but I say that that plays right into the hands of people who believe that autistics are just a population who should be kept around so that they can learn appropriate, non-autistic ways of behaving from their non-autistic peers. And, to bring up the Animal Farm analogy again, if a small elite is given the power to speak for the many, it has the potential to turn into that elite becoming our new oppressors. We'll be left outside in the cold and stables while the elite of our non-autistic spokespersons are in a comfortable house, playing cards with our old oppressors. And it'll be hard for us to tell which is which"

It has already been shown how elitist values that ultimately serve a minute portion of the population who can actually meet the standards these values promote can and do lead to harsh methods of excluding and disrespecting disabled people as well as even eugenics. This set of values cannot go unchallenged. Autistic people will not be liberated or empowered by showing that some will be able to meet already established unreasonable standards. The arrogance of believing that anyone other than the already established elite will ultimately be able to survive the ever-changing demands that large corporations are given the power to make is very self-destructive. I hope the people will be careful to not promote someone's agenda that ultimately does not empower or promote them.

Where Everybody Knows their Place

One of the themes I often write about is how the U.S. mental health care system is too often misinterpreted. This system was designed to protect the public rather than aid the recipient of the care.

The attitude that has been developed from this original design still compliments the goals of many of the enterprises that provide this care and that continues to greatly influence how that care is given.

Many modern Americans who got involved in attempting to change the government at one time or another were misled (or rather betrayed) because they were raised to believe in an unattainable status of middle class citizenship that they hoped to secure. In such a world of unattainable ideals there will be chaos, which demands uncreative minds to seek better methods of control. The more chaos they see the stricter they make their methods of control.

A corrupted system causes people to feel betrayed. Feeling betrayed leads to more erratic emotions and chaotic situations, which can again lead to the lack of inspiration and creative thinking where people again seek inappropriate methods of control. Of course inappropriate methods of control are how people again feel betrayed and how systems are further corrupted.

Psychiatric medications are advancing at a much slower rate than other medications with the same high level of demand due to how the population of people who take these medications are respected (or rather disrespected) in society.

The number of people receiving these medications is increasing and the age at which they begin taking these medications is decreasing.

The health problems these medications causes which are described as side effects are revealed in how the lifespan is shortened (this study says by 25 years) in mental health patients.

You will also find many school systems now describing a type of restraint known as chemical restraints. This is of course psychiatric medication.

One of the safety measures that is used for these medications is known as a "therapeutic dose." While such a therapeutic dose is written on the labels of medication bottles these standards do not apply when authorized by a physician in a mental health facility as a type of restraint.

Furthermore, in a mental institution a patient is given more privileges due to their lack of what is considered by the staff to be misbehavior. Of course not only are these privileges taken away when someone is seen to be misbehaving but force that is justified by the claim of needing to restrain is often nothing more than physical punishment.

With more children being diagnosed with psychological problems at earlier ages, more police officers being used in classrooms, and children being tried as adults at earlier ages, the public school systems are merging with mental health systems and corrective institutions.

As I said earlier in this post, the mental health system in the United States was designed for the safety of the public rather than the aid of the client/patient. (the term mental health consumer which is often used indicates choice where there isn't any) In addition to this influence today more than ever we have industries that are dependent on the misbehavior of children as well as adults.

Practically all commercial developments related to autism depends on the mainstream media negative stereotype of autistic people. A public institution will grow to rely on the demand for the services they provide and corporations align themselves with public institutions so that both entities are strengthened. With such alliances all programs involved are given even fewer incentives to change their policies that don't work.

No revisions to the medicare and medicaid programs will be made until the abuses are correctly attributed to the medical profession rather than continuing with the false accusation that the problem is due to the recipients.

Placing the blame on those who don't obtain an education or vocational training justifies a lack of new standards set for the public systems that claim to be providing that.

The reasons mental institutions provide control rather than aid for the patients is because that's what they are designed for.

NAMI (National Alliance for Mentally Ill) describes itself as:

For three decades, NAMI has established itself as the most formidable grassroots mental health advocacy organization in the country.

Over half (56%) of the funding for NAMI comes from the pharmaceutical industry who of course expects them in return to promote their political agenda.

NAMI supports Kendra's Law, which provides more power to parents as well as state and federal authorities to force someone into a mental institution against their will.

They also support this:


A major concern is forced outpatient drugging, which is legal today in 37 states.  Last summer, a similar bill in California, AB1800, was defeated through the help and work of a coalition of human rights organizations and people against forced psychiatry.   Under these laws, a person can be court-ordered to take psychiatric medications, and in fact in 6 of these states it is enforced through dose drop-in visits to verify that the person takes his meds.   This program, named the Program of Assertive Community Treatment (PACT), has been supported by NAMI, something that many local NAMI groups, and this reporter, object to. The National Empowerment Center has put together a program called PACE to promote the recovery model and provide an alternative to PACT.  The approach of forced drugging has also been introduced in prisons, where the prisoner can be both physically and chemically restrained, creating a chemical prison.


Their reasons for not supporting deinstitutionalization are described here:

*    failure to properly invest in community-based housing and services,
*    lack of accountability in ensuring that public mental health agencies focused limited resources on people with the most severe illnesses
*    inability of states and communities to follow and adopt best evidence-based practices in their public mental health systems, and
*    legal barriers that prevent the most severely ill individuals from accessing needed treatment.

Each of these reasons is the result of pushing for other agenda's. The wording doesn't clearly state what those agendas are at all. The needs that are expressed for this population can't be based on a broad set of ideals. Instead laws must reflect the acceptance of the type of system that is already in place in order to be passed.

Of course NAMI also endorses statewide PBS (Positive Behavioral Supports) in public schools.

Ten Best Practices for Mental Health and Schools by NAMI states this for #2

2. Training school professionals in effective research-based teaching methods and behavioral interventions including positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS).

The need for this PBS in schools is based on the misbehavior of students that is now out of control. Someone who is seen to be misbehaving is labeled as having a behavioral disorder. Once labeled a person is in a category where misbehavior is suspected.

Public institutions want stricter authority on a wider group of people with a staff trained to control behavior. They would claim that this is in the best interest of education. However, in cases where such programs have been implemented an increase in the participants becoming more educated and better trained for vocations has not been shown.

What the US government does not want to admit is that it uses public institutions to label and warehouse misfits. Whenever training is seen as a priority the type of thinking that goes with typical labeling and warehousing becomes a method of exclusion rather than inclusion.

If the United States was truly interested in including a broader majority of the people into the society that is respected, the employment rates would go up, the population of educated people would increase, and the public systems that are already in place would show how they are empowering more people.

Since all the indications are that this is not a government priority it must be understood that government officials will not favor any program that radically shows that any previous inappropriate motivations.

At this point, it is too important for the government to show that the fault with the programs is in those who were receiving them rather than in the providers. This is why when you see the support of government officials for more training in public programs you will see how that training provides more control rather than more motivation and empowerment for a broader group of people.

If it were just a matter of people not doing enough to alter the systems that are already in place you would already see a majority of people benefiting from them. If the majority of people aren't benefiting (which is now the case) you can expect that the public who is being served are those within the minority who have the most influence on public policies and laws.

If a policy or program is introduced to make the system better and doesn't demand a radical change in the attitude that created the faulty system in the first place, you can expect that the goal is to hang on to the old system in a way that the unsuspecting public still views what's happening as improvement.

The Public Disdain

How the public sees a person has a lot to do with how they see themselves. Unfortunately, once someone acquires a negative label the reinforcement of that label often comes from their family, their peers, and the general public. With enough reinforcement from others that person labeled acts in the way they are expected.

There are no oppressed groups that I know of who as a group doesn't use many of the same hierarchical public standards to judge each other. It is very distressing indeed that the oppressed minorities use the same methods of oppression that they are taught because they believe it will put them in better standings with the public.

When they are betrayed by public standards. they too often internalize their grief and take out their frustration on the other more vulnerable members of their group rather than working with them to change the public standards. This cycle is quite discouraging.

One of the aspects of this cycle that I often write about (which I think about a lot) is that what is made public information is what mostly concerns the people who are writing it.

Based on the people who are most negatively affected by the public view feeling vulnerable, dismissed, and disempowered they follow the expectations that go along with their negative label. They are not allowed to have a voice in public matters and public policies that affect them and by not knowing how to use their voice in a way that is publicly accepted, they continue to be taught not to speak up at all.

The concerns and needs of the most oppressed populations are of course not being discussed anywhere. They have no public representation.

There was a video made a while back when a woman described choosing to not murder her children and commit suicide because of respecting the welfare of her children who were not autistic and the video showed her saying this with her autistic child in the room. This is a good reminder to me that the public's perception of who autistic people are and how our emotions are incorrectly evaluated is mainly due to people not listening or conveniently ignoring us more than it is due to our not being able to communicate.

One of the difficulties that is attributed to autistic people is that of executive functioning. Aside from the neurological deficit, there are many ways that society trains marginalized groups to think in less individualized and creative ways. This of course tends to encourage autistic people to be followers (and often followers of unreasonable standards that further marginalize us) rather than helping us realize our potential. Planning requires the belief that you have some degree of control. If you don't think you do your brain is less likely to create patterns. The social expectations can limit a person's executive functioning skills even more than their neurology.

The ability to form words is not nearly as limiting to autistic people as the public's negative perception of us and the unwillingness of those concerned with public policies that affect us to hear from us.

The issue regarding the claim that vaccines cause autism is a problem for autistic people not only because the claim is false and Because there is an extreme danger in people not being vaccinated. The disrespect and marginalization of autistic people are encouraged by the public's willingness to accept an unproven claim which shows autistic people to be diseased and/or in need of a cure.

The demand for ABA training is similar in that the evidence that it works is not being demanded, the cases of trauma that it causes isn't being reported, and the claim that it is needed further negatively stigmatizes autistic people as misbehaving whether they are or not.

At this point, due partially to the political push to get ABA/PBS involved in all public schools, a parent has even less opportunity of having the abuse cases of their child heard than they would usually have with reporting abuse.

The reports of abuse that are directly associated with PBS will be systematically ignored by public officials who favor the program more than the welfare of the child.

The campaign to have ABA specialists apply restraints is furthering the objective of having the government issue strict guidelines of behavior that reflect the ways the public marginalizes autistic people and makes them more prone to abuse.

If you haven't read my previous post Restraint by Any Other Name, do so as well as reading the excellent information posted there by Hj in the comments.

At this point in time, treatments for autistic people are heavily influenced by the mainstream public perception of what autism is. This is a commercial perception that needs to suppress the voice of autistic people and promote a view of us that is contrary to our well-being. Even medical professionals are limited in what they can provide for autistic people based on an unsubstantiated public opinion.

In such an environment, it is unreasonable to not be skeptical about any treatment or form of aid that is proposed for autistic people. Showing respect and dignity to autistic people at this point is unconventional and is usually met with resistance.

Just as I described in my last post the campaign to have every public school institute a program of statewide PBS was falsely promoted by the claim that their goal was to reduce restraints and seclusion. The goal was instead to have ABA trainers who consider autism to be a behavioral disorder instruct schoolteachers on how and when to perform restraints based on their code of discipline.

The people who promote commercial products and services must be critically evaluated. Otherwise we will live in a society where the ability to finance and execute a campaign determines what people believe no matter how deceptive they are allowed to be.

The marginalization and oppression of particular groups are heavily influenced by the few people with the most resources who want to promote whatever will secure those resources for them. The inclusion of diversity contradicts their goal. No matter what long-term benefits there are to encouraging more people with different skills, this is not the path they have chosen.

The public disdain for autistic people is reflected by how we are treated. If those of us who have the most to lose are given a voice in our own future, there will be a completely different political landscape and investments of resources will be made toward giving us better lives. Until that happens, please be aware of how the absence of our voice negatively affects what people claim is for our benefit.

Restraint By Any other Name

Sometimes people are so eager for liberation they unknowingly provide too much power to a source that ultimately reverts to oppressive measures to control them. Solidarity in this case appears to be the solution but ends up adding to the problem.

Once it is really understood as to just exactly which freedoms are real and which ones are exaggerated for national/commercial promotion, there is more opportunity to make the real changes that are needed.

When there isn't a clear understanding of what real liberation is and yet the need for it is recognized people are often too eager to trust people and programs that are unworthy of trust, and they end up being even more guarded and even more hostile due to being betrayed.

In the US psychology is more of a tool used by the government to reform, restrain, or further exclude its citizens. Mostly, it just restrains and excludes and the rare cases of reform are ultimately used to further exclude others.

Just as your doctor or auto mechanic will discourage you from knowing what they do by treating you in a condescending manner, your psychologist/therapist is likely to do the same.The common view is that, unless you know what they know you shouldn't speak about it (that way you never know what they know, and they retain control over you). This makes people without sophisticated knowledge feel more vulnerable to manipulation and therefore, more distrustful.

Before psychology can help anyone, people need to be able to trust psychologists. If people are taught by psychologist committed to behaviorism, that how they act is simply due to their animalistic demand for pleasure and aversion to discomfort, they are likely to feel less empowered with fewer options.

With the normalizing pressures that behaviorists can create people may also believe that any view they have that is uncommon to mainstream society (and uncommon to their standards enforcement squad) is overly emotional and therefore, incorrect. People who want to know how much someone cares before they care how much someone knows may be seen as simple, dull witted, sentimental and silly.

Psychology is used by the US government as a means of controlling the less desirable citizens.

The DSM IV is having more types of psychological disorders added to it all the time and often those diagnosing these disorder's are mainly putting a name (any name) on societal misfits.

The determination of a psychological disorder is said to be based on the services that they need. However, there are many indications that very few people within the population of Americans that are diagnosed with these disorders receive any services that help them become more included in society. Even less of them help them do better within their chosen environment when that isn't as social.

That means the psychological labeling is used as more of a method of further discrimination than of helping to decide who needs what type of aid. This makes it more of a method of reform. That reform is most often expressed by different types of restraint. The "terminally unique" as they are referred to by the conventions of psychology, are ostracized for choosing the discomforts of dysfunctional behavior rather than accept the work of their suggested program.

Very few of the people considered to have severe mental illness seek psychological therapy beyond that of medicine. It's important to remember that therapy for the mentally ill was designed for the protection of the public and NOT for the aid of the patient. This attitude is still the guiding principle that teaches practitioners to restrain rather empower their patients.

Much of the writing that has been done by psychologists has been used politically in ways that are seen by other psychologists and academics to motivate the public. However, what is often ignored is that while these writings claim to encourage enlightenment, they do not acknowledge how societal standards and the prejudices that support them will be even more excluding of people who aren't "enlightened".

Once society has identified the unwanted members, there are many tools that are used to keep them locked into the lifestyle they have been assigned.

People who take psychiatric medications that can afford to take ones that have been through a trial and been approved by the FDA. Who are these drugs tested on? Why of course on those who can't afford them otherwise and are seen by society as needing to be subdued and restrained. People who can't afford them are "given" these medicines as part of their medical insurance benefits. It is expected that if there are health problems that result from the drugs this population is less likely to complain and less able to file a lawsuit.

Often the people who run public school systems are prone to the same mindset. Many behaviorists (and the politicians who support and protect the corporate interest of behaviorists) would now have you believe that restraints are misused in the public school system because trained behaviorists aren't the ones administering those restraints.

If that were true why haven't behaviorists got a reputation for preventing the abuses of restraints? In the cases where abuses are attributed to behaviorists, why aren't they claiming that the people responsible are no longer associated with them? Since they are interested in teaching children to be accountable for their behavior, what accountability are they showing? Certainly, they could shut down a place like Judge Rotenberg Center to show their disapproval of the abuse that continues to occur there.

People who are supporting ABA don't want you to believe the myth that PBS is a more reasonable form of ABA because they don't want to admit that ABA needs to be made more reasonable. However, it would serve their purpose for people to disregard the abuses of PBS and their association with ABA while they are trying to get bills passed to ensure statewide PBS is practiced in all schools. It can easily be assumed that such mandates can eventually result in parents being considered criminally negligent for not "providing" ABA to their children.

Too often academic settings are where people learn to learn rather than learn to think. The tests that evaluate competence show little recognition for creativity and neurodiversity because the system people are being trained to enter is designed to encourage the support of people who are already in power and further glorify the skills that these people have.

Corporate welfare doesn't provide jobs for people who would otherwise collect personal welfare checks. Public vocational training programs provide the fewest opportunities for the people who need them the most. Crimes within the communities where the people with the least financial resources have the fewest number of investigations when the crimes are against them. Public defenders are paid the least and have the least amount of experience so those people with the most financial resources can escape punishment while those with the least can be wrongly convicted.

A judge can sentence a person to behavior management programs. If you can pay for them, you are treated much better than if you have to depend on public programs. The claim is that a person who is involved with public programs for any reason lives in a less sophisticated environment and needs to have stricter programs to force them to obey.

With the same mindset is a public agency claiming to protect disabled people from abuse. This agency is called Protection and Advocacy. Without the resources to secure any other defense (or without wanting to deal with the emotional chaos of a court trial) this is the agency provided to help with abuse of public programs. This agency is funded by the same money that is allocated to fund the agencies that they claim to be protecting people from, and they have the same bosses. Of course who they protect are those other agencies rather than the public.

Statewide PBS is a program designed to make behavior a higher priority in the school system. This is similar to some school systems who have trained policemen in classrooms for little children. It also fits with court systems lowering the age of accountability so that younger children can be tried as adults.

A person with the fewest resources in a courtroom will have a very similar experience when trying to defend themselves against the abuses of a public program for people with disabilities. You will have even fewer opportunities with Protection and Advocacy because with them, you will have no chance of having an impartial judge or jury. This agency is always completely partial.

If statewide PBS is implemented, an ABA corporation that will provide the training for the teachers will form a bond with the US government that will be very difficult for people to defend themselves from.

When Walmart or Target department stores open a new location and provide the locals with lower prices, the smaller companies that can't compete are driven out of business. Once those department stores have given you fewer options of where to buy those products by canceling the competition, they can raise the prices and become the oppressor of the same group they originally claimed they were liberating.

This is how a monopoly operates, and of course it is how the US government uses agencies like Protection and Advocacy to make the US more oppressive.

The US government often deceptively promotes incentive programs within bureaucracies that reinforce the way that misfits are excluded and mistreated.

Vocational Rehab specialist are given financial incentives based on how many people they are able to place in jobs. This means that not only will they take less time with helping the least qualified but they often choose the reward of placement even when they know the person won't be able to do well enough to keep the job.

A school teacher who has financial incentives based on how many people do well may choose to spend less time with those who need it the most and provide the main resources to the most likely to succeed.

The policy of the public school system is based on a similar view that oppresses adults. The view is that some people don't want to go to school and don't want to succeed. The idea that supports their oppressive ways claims that due to the scarcity of funds (which of course is false) the resources must be used to educate the most likely to succeed.

So when a child is diagnosed with a behavioral disorder (which is how someone trained in ABA will see an autistic person) how do you think they will be treated in relation to how the other members of the class are treated? The 3 tiers of behavioral problems according to how the standards of PBS will be implemented says that the most problematic (which of course includes autistics since autistic's by ABA's definition have a behavioral disorder) will be handled by the police.

So we have more people being considered to be neurologically predisposed to lack of empathy and prone to violence, and we have behavior modificationists trying to make it a law that children be "treated" by the same trained specialists who are protected from having to evaluate their own misbehavior. What message does that send?

Becoming aware of how the systems of government are run in the US can encourage some people to be afraid of their government and some to assume many conspiracies.This of course goes beyond healthy skepticism and is not what I'm trying to encourage.

What my blog posts are designed to do is influence people to think about how disabled people may be empowered by understanding better how this empowerment is being discouraged. I am living proof that you don't have to be smart to think. You just have to be willing to do it in spite of how it may appear threatening to those who are comfortable with following mainstream expectations.

The focus on behavior has always been to me the biggest threat to original thought. This type of restraint alone makes the US not a free nation. Don't give behaviorists or their politicians the authority to restrain you or your children this way.

The campaign claiming to help reduce restraints and seclusion in the public schools is designed promote  statewide PBS being implemented in all public schools.

Find out where political groups who represent autistic rights stand when it comes to ABA and the laws that are being encouraged that will give behaviorists more power and control over you and your children. The mainstream political system is mainly influenced by the biggest corporations and the mainstream media.They have an invested interest in not working to provide more opportunities for autistics so it's imperative that no one claiming to secure rights for autistics create these political alliances.

If you are not a part of the chosen and the privileged and are needing to be fighting for your rights, you don't have the luxury to simply follow an already established path. No group of people and no government will do well without being challenged. People who are leaders depend on you whether they know it or not. If you see people or the systems people create as being designed more to restrain than to encourage people, remind them of how necessary you and your thinking is to their future.

The Focus on Behavior

Whatever the difficulties of children were in the 1980s and 90s, the biggest claim was that many had Attention Deficit Disorder and needed medicine to calm them down along with better methods of restraint.

Teachers discussed how it would be better (even when some didn't have the disorder),to have more kids in their classrooms taking a chemical restraint like Ritalin. Some schools had one or more physicians that they routinely recommended parents to for the drugs and the school kept in close touch with those physicians.

The common view was that mothers were taking bad medications during their pregnancy and/or that the children's diet was filled with too much sugar and that this was the cause for the disorder..

This certainly was part of how the US school systems gained more authority to treat behavior problems based on the public's understanding of how many and how severe the behavior problems in school really were.

Today more than ever young children are prescribed strong psychiatric medicine. This is due to the growing belief that more children's behavior must be restrained. The medicine is just one way they are attempting to do that. This report states : the life expectancy of those treated in community mental health centers has plunged to an appalling 25 years less than average.

This is just one of the physical aspects of how restraint is abused by professionals who are given a license to do so. The emotional trauma this causes is often expressed in ways that are dismissed as not being connected to the abuse.

As more children are being diagnosed on the autism spectrum, and there are more bogus and negative claims about autistic behavior being taught to the public, some are asking the US government to make into law that the restraint that they claim is needed in the schools be made by teachers who are trained in "how" to restrain kids and how to modify kids behavior. They claim that once all teachers are trained in what is called statewide PBS more attention can be made to behavior problems which they claim is how behavior is made better.

These are the categories of people who will be treated by professional ABA/PBS restrainers(autistics will of course be part of the top category that may require the most severe type of restraint that comes with the assistance of police):

The US is known for how much of their population is warehoused.The  lack of training or rehabilitation that is offered to this warehoused population is a sign that behavior modification and behavior control is more of a priority than encouraging achievement.

There more bogus rumors of how people are violent who are supposedly diagnosed to have intellectual and psychological disorders for the sake of receiving aid.

With autistics, police are trained that they can determine a persons functioning level on sight and then treat that person with the "appropriate" amount of restraint. This is of course based on the claim that low functioning autistics are violent but don't know any better and high functioning autistics are violent but DO know better (or should be taught).

The US court system is set up so that lawyers can charge fees that only the very wealthy can afford. This makes it so that an autistic who is defined as violent (which is how we are all described) must have abundant resources to disprove public opinion. Bound by this type of legal system, we are guilty until proven innocent. (but of course "self" advocates are only allowed to have a limited interest or view of autism issues)

While plenty of money is supplied to the US military efforts that govern the behavior of people in other countries, the school system is governed based on the view that there are too few resources to fund those schools well enough so that the students can be controlled properly.

The quality of education continues to get worse and the type of behavior modification that governs the other public human warehouses is seen to be more of a priority in schools. Wikipedia says about the US school systems:In 2008, there was a 77% graduation rate from high school, below most developed countries.^[7] 

This report states:  On the new international math & science test series, the Associated Press reported "American high school 12th graders scored near the bottom of all nations - out performing only Cyprus and South Africa. A comparison of the high-school elite - those who took physics and advanced math - showed American tied for the bottom.

So where is the US focus on behavior leading?

This is the new report advocating for trained behaviorists to be demanded to be in all schools.

The report describes a situation where more people in schools are being violent these days. It claims that autistics (who are often seen to be part of a recent epidemic)  are typically violent. What they describe is a situation where more kids are needing to be restrained, and therefore, we need to put more trained restrainer/behavior modifiers/ABA specialist in the schools. Never mind that behavior modification doesn't seem to be doing more than making us a more restrained nation,they believe that this is what is needed for school children.

Discouraging Development

Inclusion involves broadening the understanding of how different types of people can be encouraged to do what they do best. The attempt to modify people and normalize them makes this understanding narrower, discourages non-typical development and diverse types of resources, and ultimately excludes people from resources.This isolates people and adds to negative stereotypes.

When the cost of college is too high for the average income of a family with a kid in high school, fewer students are expected to reach that academic level. Many don't graduate high school and the high school equivalency test is more difficult than learning what is needed to finish high school, which further discourages achievement.

The person with the label of intellectual disability is more likely to get treatment for what is described as their misbehavior than they will get insights and provisions for aiding them in learning.

If people will have more opportunity for receiving intellectual aid once behaviors are "treated" (as is the claim)then what are these intellectual aids and what is their goal? If they don't have such aids then "behavior management" is more a method of exclusion than inclusion.

The interest of school boards is to provide the best education for those students who want one. This claim of theirs provides them an easy excuse for excluding students who are described as not wanting to be at school. When autism is seen as a behavioral disorder it opens the door for autistics to be seen as not wanting to be in school or of course to their sensory reaction to certain stimulus being mislabeled as misbehavior. With enough of that and the mistreatment they receive as a result they may indeed not want to be in school and for convenience sake the fault will then be seen as their own rather than the schools.

Due to age appropriate standards that are used to diagnose autistics, any misunderstanding can be seen as just a part of the "disorder" that a staff person must use any means necessary to "treat". As is the case with all people, the more that is thought that someone understands will lead to more of what can be described as appropriate that can then be demanded.

With the simplistic view of autism as a behavioral disorder, many behaviors can be more mislabeled as a child grows older and may then have more varied strengths and abilities than what is (by this standard) normal. As a child grows older and can understand certain things but not others they can fit easier into a higher functioning label which affords all governmental authorities (staff at mental institutions, corrective institutions, police etc.) to have unrealistic demands and more liberties for harsher punishments.

Even if a child is in school for 12 years, at age 18, they are then clearly seen as no longer being worthy of aid, which can lead to them being seen as more of a burden on society. Having such a short amount of time to fix and normalize these kids leads to narrower and strict programs with even harsher punishments. When the schools and the parents see how little time they have to "create" a normal independent adult, they are more willing to endorse harsher treatments with less understanding of the consequences of doing so.

With more autistics being recognized now we have the ability to empower this population of people but empowering people is always met with resistance. If parents continue to follow the resistance to neurodiversity that is promoted by the mainstream media, more children will become more discouraged by how the society that follows this mainstream view that defines them as being unworthy of respect and dignity.

Wealthy nations falsely claim they are lacking financial resources or the ability to provide quality aid and education to autistics. This claim disguises some of the ugly motivations of exclusion. True inclusion is shown by a very broad understanding of a wide diversity of human expressions. When the goal instead is to normalize and streamline it threatens people and attempts to make inappropriate treatment of people normal.

Dismissed

Unfortunately, we don't live in a world where respect is always earned and the reasons for not accepting someone's word or their opinion often has more to do with an abuse of power than it does with denying respect to those who don't deserve it.

The smaller the respect-decider group is that is in power, the narrower and strict their rules need to be, which provide them the opportunity to rule.

Behavior modification is a technique that relates to the psychology known as behaviorism (which was defined by Skinner) and was originally designed so that behavior could be more easily demanded by those in a position to do so. Those who judge people from this view of how all animals supposedly process information will naturally assume that the main achievement for people whose behavior is modified according to their belief will be that they know how to ensure for themselves the benefits given to those with the ability to comply.

This behavior modification opposes the idea of neurodiversity. The ethical claims of neurodiversity show that someone who is born with a less-than-common neurological configuration would need space to develop in less- than-common ways rather than being forced to comply with programs designed to normalize them.

When a single corporation (such as ABA's statewide PBS) seeks a government contract so that they will have the ultimate say over how, when, and where strict rules of normalcy are enforced it needs to be understood that their goal is to ultimately exclude rather than include diverse populations who see the world in different ways.
 
Having difficulty with executive functioning skills may show autistic people to be excellent candidates for programs with clearly defined guidelines. This also creates the biggest potential for abuse.

Once someone leaves a program where rewards and punishment (along with when and how they are administered) can always be anticipated, they are most prepared for another situation with a similar environment.

Preparing school children in such a way will teach them that they are nothing more than a composite of positive/negative behaviors and will teach their future caretakers which negative behaviors they are prone to so they can be further disciplined in those areas. After leaving a school where their behavior is constantly monitored and modified, they will then naturally fit well in institutional environments such as mental institutions, group homes and nursing homes, and rehabilitative services which would include jails.

The politicians responsible for promoting school wide PBS are very aware of how to sell this ABA product to parents of autistic children. These politicians are very skilled with intimidation tactics. Autistics themselves are also the best candidates for them to recruit as advocates of their behavioral program. Without our endorsement, they are less likely to seem autism-friendly to parents of autistics.

It is already very rare for autistic people to have confidence in their ability to communicate effectively in a way that will change public policy. It is even more rare for us to believe that we will have any voice in decisions that govern our future. Due to many societal methods of intimidation we have grown accustomed to, we are likely to expect that how we feel and what we believe about all behavioral demands of others will be dismissed as unimportant and unworthy of consideration.