These Every Day Little Things Can Destroy An Autistic Person
While the small cruel moments can make an autistic person feel awful, the small kind moments can help that autistic person persevere.
suicidality
A True Story About Autistic Suicidality
My brother died because of ableism. Because people—including very close family—were terrified to face his neurodivergence, and his disability.
Grieving While Autistic
I could only feel was what was missing. I couldn’t hear his voice. I couldn’t smell him near me. There were no more cuddles and no more hugs. That the sensory input of love and family that I had known every day since I born was no longer in my life.
Autism and Self-Injury: Talking With Dr. Rachel Moseley at INSAR 2019
Dr. Rachel Moseley and Carol Greenburg [image: Photos of two smiling white women wearing glasses posing together. Left, Rachel Moseley has shoulder-length light brown hair. Right, Carol Greenburg’s hair is in a platinum bob.] Content note: This interview discusses self-injury and suicidal behavior. Oftentimes the most rewarding findings at INSAR, the annual meeting for the
INSAR 2019: Learning How to Prevent Suicide in Partnership with Autistic People and Their Allies
Yesterday we attended the INSAR 2019 panel Where Do We Go from Here? Learning How to Prevent Suicide in Partnership with Autistic People and Their Allies, led by Sarah Cassidy from Nottingham University who has been doing this for four years now. Here is what the speakers had to say. (Any errors or omissions are on
On Autism and Social Camouflaging: An Interview With Lily Levy
Lily Levy at INSAR 2018 [image: Lily Levy, a white British woman, presenting a poster at an autism conference.] INSAR 2019, the International Meeting For Autism Research, starts in three days. Before we begin our coverage, we’d like to emphasize research and themes from last year’s conference INSAR 2018, in Rotterdam—so we can proceed with a
When Autistic People Have Epilepsy
Photo © Ivo Dimitrov | Flickr / Creative Commons [image: Illustration of a human brain, in profile, made of colorful cogs in various sizes and shapes.] Maxfield Sparrow unstrangemind.com [Content note: This post discusses suicidality, mental health, and death.] In the early 1990s, I was engaged to a man with epilepsy. He had tonic-clonic seizures
INSAR 2018: Autism and Suicidality Special Interest Group (SIG)
Sarah Cassidy’s INSAR 2018 SIG on autism and suicidality brought ~60 autistic people and autism researchers and professionals to discuss research on, and factors underlying and mitigating, suicidality in autistic people—as well as next steps for researchers. The statements and images below are from our original Twitter Moment compilation/report on this SIG. We then heard back that
Autism and Suicidality: Conversations Between Researchers and Autistic People
Photo © Gayan Gunawardana | Creative Commons [image: Backlit photo of a sad ponytailed person with their head down, in profile in front of an ocean sunset.] Dr. Sarah Cassidy co-chaired a SIG (Special Interest Group) on Autism and Suicidality at IMFAR 2016, in Baltimore. We weren’t able to attend her session, but Dr. Cassidy
The Effects of Stigmatizing Language on Suicidal Autistics
M. Kelter theinvisiblestrings.com Photo by Boudewijn Berends, used under a Creative Commons license [image: head and shoulders of a person wearing glasses backlit by partially-lighted fog and clouds.] When it comes to online discussions about autism issues, I regularly interact with two realms. The first realm is one we’re all familiar with: the day-to-day articles