Autism Awareness
“We’re all a little weird, and life’s a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love”, famously articulated by Dr Seuss in relations to autism awareness. The term “autism” can decode a range of different meanings to people. To some, it conjures an impression of the socially awkward who, engrossed in a narrow set of interests, becomes overwhelmed and avoids conversations and large groups of people in accord to self-isolate. To others, it’s a severely life-limiting condition to which impacts every waking hours of a family’s life and consumes necessary concern in their loved ones.
Studies have shown that autism spectrum disorder is an advanced disability caused by differences in the brain at a premature age. These differences are unknown to everyone, however those with ASD have a known difference, such as genetic condition. There is often nothing about how people with ASD look that sets them apart from other individuals, but they may communicate, behave, and learn in ways that are considered unique from others. With this medical condition, some people may need support in their daily lives; others need less. A diagnosis of ASD includes several conditions that were termed separately, such as autistic disorder, pervasive developmental disorder and Asperger syndrome. These conditions are now all called Autistic Spectrum Disorder.
Without the public’s understanding, autistic people and families are at a risk of being isolated and developing mental problems. Autism is much more common than others consider. In accordance to what was researched, there is a high number of 700,000 citizens on the autism spectrum in the UK. So, that is than 1 in 100. Autism does not affect children. It grows with them. 63 per cent of children on the autism spectrum are not in the kind of school their parents deem is the best support for them and 17 per cent have been suspended from school. 70 per cent of autistic adults have said they’re not receiving the help from social service as needed. At least 1 in 3 autistic adults are experiencing severe mental health due to lack of support. Seventy per cent have trusted that with more support and care they would feel less isolated.
There has been a case in which the impairment has been a challenge to a prominent figure with the condition. I interviewed Jody O’Neill, a writer and actor who discovered she was autistic as an adult, following the diagnosis of her young son. After extensive exploring and emerging the work of autism acceptance, she began to be “personally and artistically interested in the idea of autism” which resulted in initialising a play called What I (Don’t) Know About Autism. Due to the misunderstanding of people with autism, she says, “the play itself is 23 scenes and each of them explored a different area of autism so we looked at things like, dating when you’re autistic we looked at how autism is being treated in education systems and how strange they can become and how amazing they can be”.
Jody O’Neill and I were skyping at 8 o clock from my laptop and her laptop. I was in my bedroom with my warm cup of peppermint tea on my nightstand that kept me company from feeling apprehensive. It was billowing rings of clouded steam that flew up in the air and straight towards my open window.
Jody’s impetus to make this play is to spread awareness and opportunity to celebrate autism community and highlight the challenges autistic people face in society and to educate the wider public to have a better understanding of the condition, “I’ve written the play, What I (Don’t) Know About Autism for two reasons and it is to promote autism awareness so we get an idea that we don’t need to fix autistic people. We need to adapt the world to better understand all its citizens”.
According to O’Neill, there are people who is suffering with autism are also suffering to conform to the world they live in. She specified that these people, like herself, manage to observe other people’s attributes and take them by thinking this is what they should be in this world, “I remember I had one best friend when I was 4 and I just copied everything that she did. And, then, when I went to secondary school, I had another best friend and I would just copy everything she did. Like she had an English accent, so I changed my accent to be the same as hers.”.
However, this concludes a sense of realisation because, although, individuals observe and match other people’s attributes, they will feel a loss of who they feel they are. O’Neill confirmed about how she lost an assurance of herself after a long-term of imitating her close friends, “All the way to college as well like when you get a little older is that if you’re always copying then you don’t have a very strong sense of yourself. So, then that is very challenging for everyone.”
From her experience as a mother, she even struggled maintaining a relationship with her son. She stated that as “you’re looking up all these traits as this could give a risk of looking after your child when you start looking for symptoms. So, you start reading into things as you should just enjoy your relationship and just play. As for us now, getting the diagnosis, we don’t have to start looking up things. We already know the story”. However, all is well that ends well after the revelation of her son’s diagnosis.
In this case, considering O’Neill’s play and her experience with her son, following his diagnosis, she had mentioned that, “even on the more difficult days, even in the midst of fears for the future, I would never want to take away the fact that we are autistic”. In accordance to her statement, people must celebrate the knowledge that the world is involved with special individuals with an impairment called ASD. So, instead of refusing to believe it, people should listen and celebrate autism awareness and support those in need.
Finally, O’Neill had ended with this, “I will listen. I will try. Sometimes, I will succeed. Sometimes, I will fail. When I fail, I will try again. And, so should everyone in the world.”
