Wednesday, July 31, 2019

Legwork and Life, week of 7/31/19

This is Legwork and Life, where I track the legwork and opportunities in my career as an autistic advocate, and also describe parts of my adult autistic life, including my perspectives on everyday problems and situations.

I'm tired this week.  Between the bright summer morning light and my spouse getting up in the morning, I can't seem to sleep in at all.  In addition, I abused my system a bit yesterday in service of science and improved knowledge, which I'll explain in detail on Friday.  I haven't had to go to the hospital, but the experience definitely took a toll.  I'm now trying to recover from it.  With luck, it won't take the rest of the week.  

I'm going to start getting more serious about the wifi restriction stuff I mentioned wanting to try last week.  Starting with turning the wifi off at night.  I miss being able to sleep in, and while the summer light levels probably mean that's an impossibility, I'd like to exhaust my options.  

It's been kind of a busy week.  There was a work party at Chris' workplace, which we attended.  We didn't stay long, because it was supposed to be a family-friendly thing, and we don't have kids and also don't know many people at the company.  But it was free food, at least.

We also had two sets of friends visit the house, which was fun but also draining when you're already low on energy.  The first was a dinner and game night combo, the second a dessert and movie night.  Good times were had.  Another friend will come by tomorrow.  This is all good for my social life, but bad for my energy levels and attempts to get work done on this blog.

Lastly, still another friend got into a car accident, which totaled her poor car and gave her and her wife some ouchy bruises (though thankfully no other injuries, apparently).  She's having kind of a bad time right now, so I'm helping out by serving as transportation to work, and occasionally errands.  Considering I have the luxury of my own car, this is a service that's easier for me to offer than it could be.  It does take time, which I'm making the best of with podcasts.

I'd been neglecting my podcasts for the last month or so.  I can't listen to them while I'm trying to work, because I need my words-processing capability for formulating ideas and turning them into words.  It's a shame, because I missed listening to my various folklore, history, news, and comedy podcasts.  Possibly, I should simply set aside some time each week to simply do that, rather than expecting opportunities to pop up.  In the meantime, though, I get to listen to a podcast, then spend time with my friend for a bit, then listen to more podcast on the way home.  

Monday, July 29, 2019

Reading the Research: Safe at Home?

Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.

Today's article addresses bullying, especially the more hidden type: sibling bullying.  It's well known, at this point, that autistic people tend to be bullied much more than our neurotypical peers.  The Japanese proverb goes, "the nail that sticks up gets hammered down."  It applies very strongly to autistic people, and it's especially obvious as children. 

Usually, when bullying is brought up, it's in regards to the school system, or the playground.  This isn't surprising, it's where a lot of socialization and interaction happens.  Thing is, the interactions don't stop when you go home.  Particularly when siblings come into the mix. 

It's not easy being the sibling of an autistic person.  Often, the autistic person has higher care needs than the other siblings, and therefore the parents spend more time on the autistic child than the others.  This can cause jealousy, hurt, and sadness.  The differing expectations parents may hold for their different children can also be a source of strain and frustration. 

This is, of course, in addition to the autistic person's differences in interactions, responses, and interests.  Siblings who share interests may play together, but autistic peoples' interests can be so deeply focused, or so unusual, that it's hard for others to enjoy them, or even share them.  This was mostly the case with my brother and me, though some of that might also be explained by the five-and-a-half-year age difference. 

So in the end, you have a lot of potential strain on the family relationships.  This can lead to bad behavior, such as bullying.  In addition, the autistic child may not know or understand that bullying is not an appropriate behavior, so once learned, they may perpetuate the cycle of cruelty. 

A home is supposed to be a place of safety and support, so that even if school is a nightmare, at least home is a refuge and a place to be yourself.  It's kind of horrifying to me to even consider how my life might have gone if my brother had been more adversarial about our relationship.  Even just imagining having siblings closer in age that teamed up regularly to make my life harder would probably have sent me into a lot of poor behavior. 

Therefore, I can't stress enough how important Sibshops and similar programs are.  Healthier family dynamics mean happier kids, happier parents, and better lives for everyone involved.  And hopefully, such programs can head off these situations before they begin, or at least before they snowball into rampant bad behavior. 

(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn't get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)

Friday, July 26, 2019

Book Review: Mindful Living with Asperger's Syndrome

Mindful Living with Asperger's Syndrome: Everyday Mindfulness Practices to Help You Tune Into the Present Moment, by Chris Mitchell, is a guidebook on meditation and mindfulness specifically for autistic people, by an autistic person.  At less than 125 pages, it's a short read, which is nice.

The main of the book discusses mindfulness, how it's helpful for autistic people, why you might want to start practicing it, and then, how to practice it.  My attention as a reader was quickly drawn away from that by how hyperfocused the author was on the diagnosis.

The words "Asperger's syndrome" are on basically every page, as if this is the most important thing about the reader and all the reader's personality traits and tendencies are derived from that. I found the repetition rather distracting and kind of superfluous to the topic at hand.  It was so distracting that I stopped reading and counted.  In the first 62 pages, there were exactly four pages that didn't mention Asperger's syndrome or autism in some fashion.

Honestly, it felt like the author was still in the "everything strange or different about me is autism" stage of handling the diagnosis, but that might not be accurate given that he wrote the book some 16 years post-diagnosis.

That highly distracting repetition aside, the book does walk you through several meditation and mindfulness practices and why they're relevant to autistic people in particular.  The idea of mindfulness is to take your mind out of the past or the future, and focus on the present, including any sensations you might be experiencing.  Practicing it can pull you from your everyday preoccupations, help you relax, and sharpen your observational skills regarding yourself and others.

The author opines that autistic people tend to get "stuck in routine," because routine in comfortable and safe.  But then when the routine is disrupted, it's extremely upsetting and can cause meltdowns.  With mindfulness, you can become more flexible to change, see social situations differently, and manage yourself better.

Most of the mindfulness practices were ones I'd heard of before, but there was one new one: walking practice.  Generally when one talks about meditation or mindfulness, the assumption is that you're in some quiet place, sitting comfortably but with good posture, or perhaps performing yoga.  Apparently you may practice mindfulness in the course of taking a walk, and that is also acceptable.  I have trouble sitting still and focusing on simply being, so combining light exercise with mindfulness might be a good plan, and less likely to drive me batty.

I do kind of wonder about the effect of mindfulness on sensory sensitivities. The practices in this book instruct you to acknowledge and accept incoming sensations, like background noise, strain in your muscles, and any sensations on your skin. I suppose this makes me worried that practicing might lead to sensory overload, because being aware of all these things can be overwhelming and painful. That's literally how my flavor of sensory overload works: my brain stops even trying to filter out irrelevant noises and everything gets so loud and sharp and overwhelming that I have to go hide somewhere quiet.

I assume that's why you generally practice mindfulness in a quiet, comfortable environment, but as someone who hasn't really made a lot of headway with mindfulness or meditation, I really wouldn't know. Maybe mindfulness gives you a superpower to head off sensory overwhelm, if you practice faithfully and find what works for you.

In all honesty, I'm not sure this book was written for someone like me.  I don't actually have much by a way of a routine to get stuck in.  There are regularly scheduled events, but if those don't happen, I don't get really upset.  Schedule changes are really only anger-inducing if they keep happening over and over, with the same events getting pushed back and back.  I've accepted that life is unpredictable by nature, and that I have a certain amount of desire for new and interesting things.  I have disabilities around sensory issues, but I tend to compensate for them and try not to let them keep me from going out or seeing friends and family. 

This might mark the first time an autistic person has made assumptions about how my autism affects me, and been wrong.  I don't know why that surprises me.  Professionals, parents, and teachers get it wrong all the time.  There are eleventy billion definitions of autism, and it's not like there's much agreement on the subject.  So differing opinions, even in the autism community, would be nothing new or surprising. 


Read This Book If
You're autistic, prone to getting stuck in routine, and want to change that using mindfulness.  Also, make sure you can get past the endless repetition about your diagnosis. This is a pretty niche book, to be honest. It's fine at what it does, but it's pretty much the bare basics and doesn't strive to be more than that.

Wednesday, July 24, 2019

Legwork and Life, week of 7/24/19

This is Legwork and Life, where I track the legwork and opportunities in my career as an autistic advocate, and also describe parts of my adult autistic life, including my perspectives on everyday problems and situations.

I did end up making a mixed berry pie from the summer black raspberries.  I needed to supplement it with a few store raspberries and blackberries, but I think the end result was pretty good.  I froze about half the pie after it had cooled, because a whole pie is a bit much for two people to eat in a few days.  

A mixed berry pie with a heart cut into the top crust.

a green cutting board with a paring knife.  Below are three berries for comparison: a raspberry, a blackberry, and a wild-grown black raspberry.  The wild berry is about an eighth the size of the blackberry.

I'm still coughing and sniffling a bit.  And the red bumps aren't really going away.  My doctor has a theory for this, which I think I'll try out next week.  The test will likely be misery-inducing, but hopefully educational, and it's only as expensive as buying some extra food ingredients and planning a day's meals.  I'll make a Friday post out of it, so look forward to that next week.  

View from a glider- mostly puffy white clouds and blue sky

View from a glider.  A layer of puffy clouds, with patchwork of trees, roads, and farmland below

View from a glider.  Patchwork of fields, forests, and roads, with the occasional puffy white cloud.

Also this week, I finally received my birthday present from last year, which was put off by weather- and people-related shenanigans until now.  My spouse bought me a 5,000 foot glider ride, which was fairly fun.  I like the fluffy clouds and seeing the patchwork quilt of the landscape.  Generally I only get to see such things from a commercial aircraft, and even then, not very often.  So it was kind of fun to try this kind of flying.  I probably wouldn't go again, especially not with that particular company (because of said people-related shenanigans), but it was a good experience to have had.  

This week I've been experimenting with having the wifi turned off on my tablet at bedtime.  My spouse has kindly done the same.  The theory is that wifi, dirty electricity, and cell phone signals can mess with peoples' brain signals, which can disrupt sleep and such.  

I haven't noticed a whole lot of changes with the lack of wifi, but then, I've been having to get up for various reasons, so maybe this hasn't been the best test.   I'd like to try a couple more things before giving up on the endeavor.  First, I'd like to start turning off our home's wifi overnight.  It's not like we're using it while we're sleeping anyway.  And second, I'd like to move the bed away from the wall.  It turns out that our electricity meter (which is a smart meter) is right against the wall the bed is on, which... isn't great, by the sound of what my doctor tells me about the theory I'm testing.  I'm not really 100% clear on the theory in question, so that's something I'll have to ask about before I write on it more.

Monday, July 22, 2019

Reading the Research: Communication, Pain, and "Problem Behavior"

Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.

Today's article underlines a point I think many parents miss, but is kind of obvious when you think about it.  

First: all behavior is communication.  When we talk about communication in a mainstream sense, we tend to be referring to a very narrow range of what communication actually is.  Mainly, we're talking about speaking the country's dominant language, while following the rules the majority of the population follows.  We might also be talking about what I'm doing here: writing and reading in said dominant language.  

The thing is, communication is so much more than that.  It's what actions a person takes.  It's how they take those actions.  It's pictures and graphs and tone of voice and other languages and personal slang.  There are an absolutely dizzying number of ways people can communicate.  

Calling any of that "problem behavior" is kind of ignoring the essential nature of that behavior.  If it's a problem for you, then you should figure out what the behavior is communicating.  

Non-verbal autistic people sometimes behave aggressively.  This can be for a lot of reasons, from frustration with their situation, to despair in their life prospects, to the one this article is tracking: pain.  

Anyone who's dealt with sufferers of chronic pain, or even been in a bad mood due to a headache or backache, shouldn't find this surprising.  Being in pain, especially day after day, has real consequences for your mood and outlook.  You can see this often in older people, whose bodies can cause them significant pain due to any number of ailments.  The word I've often heard or such people is "crotchety," but "crabby," "volatile," and "ill-tempered" have also been applied.  Because nonverbal or low-verbal people can't easily communicate that they're hurting, they may also display these less pleasant behaviors, and it's not so easy to get treatment for the issues when the person can't tell you what hurts, when.  

Then, too, the person may not even realize their suffering is abnormal.  They may be so used to it that they don't even think to ask for help.  I'm a highly verbal person, but I actually spent most of my childhood having regular constipation, which caused me pain on a regular basis.  I wasn't aware this was unusual, and thus that issue continued right up to the point that I accidentally nuked my digestive tract and developed the opposite problem, which now lingers when I eat too much sugar or really don't eat a perfectly healthy diet.  

One of the common themes I see in "my family's experience with autism" books and "fix your child's autism with my system" is the insistence that when the "problem behaviors" go away, the autism is cured or lessened.  This is... mostly a misunderstanding, I'd bet.  The child or adult doesn't act up as much, or act as unusually after This or That Technique is tried.  The person is pronounced "not autistic any more," and the day is saved.  

The change in the person's behavior is because their body is functioning more healthily, and therefore they are suffering less.  When people don't suffer, they're less inclined to be angry, frustrated, and lash out at setbacks and smaller disruptions.  Their behavior will change, because their internal state has improved.  You also have a happier, healthier person, which is really the more important part if you ask me.

(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn't get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)

Friday, July 19, 2019

Product Review: MagnusCards app

A few weeks ago, I was told about an app called MagnusCards.  It's basically a collection of sets of directions for various life skill subjects.  Basically, the idea is to have a reference for various day-to-day activities, with pictures, for people to be able to look at and use as needed.


The app is for iOS and Android.  I tested it on an Android tablet.  I'd say it's probably more geared for phones, but you can still manage on a tablet.  I mainly opted to review this app because it has information on my local library system, meaning someone from that library system actually went to the trouble of making these and submitting them to the app.  I actually went and visited the nearest branch, and followed along with the relevant cards while I was there.  I'll talk about that below.

The "cards," or sets of instructions, come in categories like Shopping, Personal Care, Leisure, Social, Food, and Travel.  They are all free, and written in very simple English.  You can download cards you like, or cards that are most relevant to your life.  Some of these cards are from Canadian or even British organizations, so it'd be wise to check the cards before downloading them.

When you've chosen a category, you can then choose a contributing organization or a specific card.  So, in Leisure, you can choose Kent District Library, or scroll down to choose "Kent District Library- Logging into a computer at the library."

You are then presented with the first sub-card, which is usually an introduction to the topic.


You can then swipe left and right to navigate between the sub-cards, which describe the process and also tell you what things you need to do the process or activity.  There are cards for getting a library card, searching the catalogue, using the self-checkout machines, logging into a library computer, and a more general "what to expect" card, which basically describes what the library offers (much more than just books!), the presence of helpful staff members, the availability of rest rooms, and other details.

In looking through these cards at KDL, I learned that you can check out a pair of noise-canceling headphones.  This is particularly helpful on the first floor of my location, where kids tend to congregate (and play Fortnite on the public computers).  They were big, over-the-ear, noise-isolating headphones, and they did help, though not as much as my personal pair that has active noise-canceling.  But it might be a bit much to expect every library location to shell out for a $200 pair of headphones, and then replace them when they get damaged.  Libraries, unfortunately, are not rolling in money.

The cards are a mix of qualities.  The KDL ones were of pretty good quality, but the Social cards were extremely basic, sometimes to the point of absurdity.  Considering the complexity of social situations, even things as simple as greeting people can get complicated, so I probably shouldn't be too harsh in my judgments here.  I guess it's the wistful and tired autistic in me wanting social stuff to be boiled down to easy, simple directions that I could just follow and everyone would be happy.  No such luck.  For basic social interactions and people who don't need to perfectly pass as "normal" these are better than nothing, at least.

I was reasonably pleased with Colgate's series on tooth care, which I thought was pretty good.  There were also a good number of well done "simple recipe" cards.  not all of them are the healthiest choices ever, but simple does not always equal healthy.  The Cleaning cards were also fairly decent.

I didn't get too indepth with every category, but my best guess is that the more abstract the subject, the less helpful the cards will be.  So, while the card for "Dealing with Anxiety" had some helpful pointers in general, I didn't find it personally terribly relevant to my Generalized Anxiety Disorder.  Most of the Social cards were in the same boat, and most of the Money Management cards.  Something is still better than nothing, anyway.

Overall, I found the app fairly easy to use, if a little basic.  I would very much like to see the option to make your own cards.  This idea is a good one, but other than my library system, there's nothing immediately local to be referenced here.  I could see an enterprising parent putting together this app and the concept of Social Stories into one extremely helpful, meltdown-reducing package.

Another thing I was hoping to see, but mainly didn't, was a more non-verbal-friendly approach.  There are a good number of autistic people, especially children, that don't read very well, or even at all.  I'd imagined that perhaps there might be some cards where the reading was optional.  At least for now, that's not the case.  The pictures are more accompaniments to the written directions than they are directions themselves.  Again, this isn't really surprising, and I'm not sure I'd do better if put to the task.  But it's a thing that could possibly be improved upon.

In the end, I probably won't keep this app for my personal use, but I'm not its intended target anyway.  This app is geared more towards people who don't have personal care and life skills memorized, or may need reminding for how to do them.  It can also ease the load on a parent, who may be asked repeatedly how to accomplish some of these processes, or serve as a support service in helping an autistic person achieve independent living.

TL;DR:  A good, though very limited, app for autistic people who need extra help with life skills and personal care skills.  Has directions for the my local library system.  Needs the ability to make your own cards.  

Wednesday, July 17, 2019

Legwork and Life, week of 7/17/19

This is Legwork and Life, where I track the legwork and opportunities in my career as an autistic advocate, and also describe parts of my adult autistic life, including my perspectives on everyday problems and situations.

This week I'm just tired.  Toro, the parrot I mentioned last week, is home with her moms as of yesterday.  Taking care of her was an effort, and she definitely has a mind of her own.  She even gave her moms some trouble, when they came to get her.  Silly thing.  I'm sure she's a lot happier now that she's home, though.

  

I'm still coughing on occasion, and my nose isn't entirely back to normal.  I'm not sure what the deal is now.  The doom algae out back was growing nicely, so perhaps that's it.  I'd had more psychological problems last year when that was the case, though, so I dunno if that explains it.  The heavens opened up and it just sheeted rain for about a half hour yesterday, which seems to have torn the algae to shreds.  If I do better today, that might be a good sign that the algae was the problem.  

I'm not sure today will be super different, though.  I woke up quite early today instead of sleeping until my usual time.  That might simply be a temperature issue, but it's really not that hot out yet and I was using a lighter blanket as well.  

In the meantime, I'm trying to do the bare minimum for most of my activities, which isn't always working out due to the enthusiasm of others.  That's life, but I can't exactly get my lost energy back, so I really hope life stops complicating itself for a bit so I can recover mentally and emotionally.  It's kind of been one long expenditure of energy, starting at Games Done Quick, continuing with the cold, and then taking care of Toro.  If I'm fortunate, I can have a bit of a breather before October, Month of All Birthdays, arrives.  

My outdoor adventures with black raspberries are mostly over, unfortunately.  The season is fairly short, counted in weeks, but only like 2-3.  I still have some berries left from the last outing, at least.  I'll probably freeze half of them, or however much I need to make a pie.  I don't think I've ever actually made a fruit pie before, so hopefully I can find a good recipe.

I didn't come away from my adventures entirely unscathed this time.  I appear to have a great number of tiny bumps.  They itched at first, but I washed them with soap and now they don't.  Not sure what the deal is.  They're not red since I washed them, but the Internet isn't being super forthcoming on what they are, possibly because there are a lot of possibilities.  They're not making me miserable, at least.  I ruled out poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac.  My best guess is oak mites, which apparently die if kept indoors, so I guess if I don't sprout any more, that's probably it?  

I guess I can check with my doctor about them when I see her tomorrow, too.  She's a big proponent of outdoor activities, and also a mom of four, so she's probably seen whatever this is before. 

Assuming the bumps are nothing horrible, the raspberry plants seem to be coming into season, so I might go out for a small harvest of those.  I've seen a lot fewer of the regular raspberry plants, but there were several at a local park, and another near my parents' place.  Definitely not enough to make a pie out of, or even a substantial side dish, but cool to see and fun to snack on.  Wild raspberries taste just like the ones you find in the store, except perfectly ripe and always flavorful.  I guess, if I found enough, I could put them into a mixed berry pie with the black raspberries?  

Monday, July 15, 2019

Reading the Research: Picky Eating

Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.

Today's article deals with a common trait among autistic people: extremely picky eating.   It's an order of magnitude beyond "she just won't eat brussels sprouts," mind you.  The article mentions a child that would only eat bacon and drink iced tea, which... you can imagine isn't exactly nutritionally balanced.  But I've also heard a lot of parents talk about a "white foods" diet, where their child would only consume bread, pasta, and dairy products without a fight. 

This type of odd diet preferences is apparently so common in people with autism diagnoses, that these researchers suggest adding it to the diagnostic criteria for autism.  I guess it's not like the criteria are that helpful anyway...  So adding this might clue pediatricians into recommending a screening earlier. 

Which is I guess another way that people like me will probably become rarer and rarer.  I escaped diagnosis until I was almost 21, which was a bit late to really do much but pick up the pieces and help me put them into some kind of order as an adult. 

Maybe it wouldn't have caught me.  I guess my eating habits were more preferential than... specifically restricted like the above examples.  I strongly preferred to eat bread and pasta, so much so that my dad dubbed me "the bread girl."  I was sufficient stubborn on some points that this was established:


Don't be fooled.  That list was in effect a lot longer than 5 months.  It was changed on occasion, as you can see by the erase marks.  As I got older, I made more of an effort to eat things I wasn't fond of or didn't like.  At present, I eat everything on the above list: fish (occasionally, when it's sustainably fished), broccoli (for breakfast, regularly), cabbage and cauliflower (only when it's put in front of me), and peppers (when they show up in recipes).  The last time I posted this, I commented that it's lucky for my mom I didn't realize cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli are all part of the same cultivated wild plant, and I could have gotten six foods for one if I'd just said "any descendant of the wild mustard plant." 


As of now, I don't think I've tried kohlrabi.  Mostly new/untried vegetables fall in the "I'll eat it if it's put in front of me" category.  That includes the wild foods I've been foraging with my friend, except they kind of get put in front of me by virtue of the fact that I've labored to acquire them.  Honestly, she provides most of the impetus/is usually the one to initiate these adventures, and I mostly just come along for the ride but do my best while I'm there. 

I think the type of restrictive eating often found in autistic people might be a combination of a few things.  First, it's a way to have some control over a terrifying, painful environment.  Humans do poorly if they suffer and have no control, so people of all ages will try to assert some control in order to suffer less.  This is a normal response, much as it may not seem it. 

Second, bread and pasta are both very quick-convert forms of energy, and my tongue knew it.  I don't really know how to describe this, but even today, when I eat plain pasta or plain bread (not often these days) there's this inherent "yum" factor.  It's like my body recognizes this food will very quickly convert to sugar/energy, and tells me so immediately.  To this day, I prefer to have some of my pasta plain, rather than all coated in sauce, because of this.  (Of course, white bread and plain pasta are refined foods, and should be avoided, so I mostly do.)

Third, there's comfort in familiarity.  This is different than the control factor I listed, though it's connected to it.  Familiar foods, foods you can count on to have the same texture, color, and flavor, are soothing in a world that is often so very confusing and full of inconsistencies.  If you can come home after school every day and look forward to eating the same delicious meal every night, which you never get tired of, why wouldn't you?  To my mother's horror, I'm sure, I did this in my junior year of college.  Macaroni and cheese, every dinner of every week night.  It made shopping very simple, too: I just needed to make sure I had milk and butter.  My lunches were more nutritionally complex, at least. 

As I've aged, I've personally attempted to expand my diet beyond what my mother achieved.  She actually did a pretty decent job in introducing me to various kinds of foods, and so I've built on her good example.  I did still have a poor gut reaction to curry when I first tried it, so I guess that never made it onto the dinner plate, but everything else has been merely a test of taste buds and mental fortitude. 

(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn't get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)

Friday, July 12, 2019

Reading My Psychological Evaluation

Recently, due to participating in a research study, I was asked to get a copy of the psychological evaluation that told me I was autistic.  I did so, and summarily read it.  I can't remember if this is the first time I've read it, or if I had a copy ever.  But it's certainly the first time in quite a while that I've read it, so it was interesting... and depressing, reading.

The place that did the evaluation is a local one, with various therapeutic programs in addition to their diagnostic services.  I wasn't over-impressed with their offerings at the time, and my insurance wouldn't have covered them anyway, so I never got too involved with the organization.  I have no idea if that was a good decision on my part or not.  But all the same, I do at least finally have a date on which I got my autism diagnosis.  It turns out I was almost 20 and a half when I got my diagnosis, right on the tail end of my sophomore year of college.  Near finals week.  No wonder I don't remember it very well.

It's worth noting, before I begin, that I was diagnosed under the DSM-IV-R, or the revised version of the 4th edition of the American Psychological Association's diagnostic manual.  At the time of this writing, the most current DSM is the 5th edition, wherein Asperger's Syndrome only exists as a different name for ASD, or Autistic Spectrum Disorder.  Also known as "autism."  I now choose to identify as "autistic," because of this diagnostic change, and because while I speak, live independently, and present as fairly normal, I share some of the same difficulties as a nonspeaking, dependent, poorly-blending autistic person.  Also, by putting a human face on the condition as a whole, it becomes harder for people to treat nonverbal, poorly speaking, dependent autistic people as... less than people.  And there's already quite enough abuse of disabled people to go around. 

The First Page and the Interview

The first page of the report involves demographics, including some unusual and probably unnecessary information.  Date of birth, name, education, and medications, naturally.  But they also wanted to know where I was living, any eyewear I happened to need, and which hand is my dominant one.  I have a bachelor's degree in psychology, and I really have no idea why those last three pieces of information are relevant.

I remember being mentally exhausted after the test, and looking back at the list of tests and the number of hours billed, I can kind of see why.  The testing process took a minimum of 4 hours, possibly 5.  The psychologist began by interviewing me, which included getting everything from my birth weight to any surgeries, allergies, family history, and my particular descriptions of my personal oddities.  While she was getting all this information, she was also observing what I said and how I said it.  Which is how you get sentences like, "From the initial interview throughout the assessment process, it was noted that Ms. Frisch does have some unusual intonation and patterns of speaking.  She presents as being very factual and concrete, but often tells stories that are somewhat unusual in that they are more detail focused or seem to be slightly 'off center' of the main topic of conversation."

As an aside on that second sentence, my brain references things by associated things, rather than in chronological order or some other more pragmatic system.  So if I was trying to remember a particular dog species, I'd need to flip mentally through my concepts of similar dog breeds until I found the one I was looking for, or try to remember another dog I knew that looked like the one I was trying to remember.  This associational pattern of organization can lend itself to that slightly "off center" kind of comment... but in all honesty, this psychologist is the only one to ever complain about it.  And in truth, I'm not the only one I know that does this, and I find it simply moves the conversation along.  So I don't find it all that bothersome.  I am not, after all, an encyclopedia.

There was also this comment: "While she attempts to engage readily in conversation and is able to be reciprocal back and forth, she sometimes will take the conversation to an unusual level that may reflect intellectual knowledge, but may also be reflective of some of the social dynamics of Asperger's."   I've included this sentence exactly as written, awkward grammar and all, because it's always nice to know that even doctors need to have a human eye check over their work.  As for my conversational skills, I find that the more enlightened and accepting people I speak with find my particular tendencies interesting, rather than detrimental.  Exploring a subject in detail, or from an unusual angle, rather than skimming over it lightly, is an educational exercise. 

This section gets the summary: "Her overall presentation, tone of voice, being more monotone, and difficulty with eye contact are also consistent with a typical Asperger's presentation."  It's worth noting that some autistic people actually go the exact opposite way in terms of voice tones, to the point of sounding "sing-song," or even cartoonish.  I'm actually familiar with one such autistic person, and the end result is probably just as confusing as my semi-monotone voice was.  I think my vocal variance has probably improved somewhat in the 9 years since this evaluation was done, but I guess I'd have to go back to find out.

So Many Tests

After the interview, the tests began.  There were... so many.   (The paper says there were only six, but on average, each took 45 minutes, minimum... so it added up fast.)  One came after the next, too, with almost no breaks.  I think I remember calling for a break after my bladder filled up so much I couldn't see getting through another test... and when I got up, my legs felt stiff and tired from all the sitting.  

At the time, I found the experience fascinating... at least until I got tired, so I took notes about the tests in my downtime between tests.  I took them on my puzzle book, which I still have because I'm only occasionally interested in word search puzzles. 

You can also see how frazzled I was overall by how disordered my self-explanation of the tests is...
I am not 100% sure which tests came first, even with my notes here... but we have to start somewhere, so we'll start with the Rey-Osterreith Figure Drawing.  I linked the complete figure in an earlier post regarding visual processing difficulties, but I'll post it here again.

Rey-Osterreith Figure Drawing

This is overly complicated on purpose.
If you compare my drawing in the picture above with this figure, you can kind of start to see how markedly different my visual processing is from the average person's.  The average person, you see, recognizes that this figure is an overly complicated box with a fin on top and a triangle on the right side, at its heart.  They then fill in as many details as they can remember.  

My drawing can tell you that I entirely missed that, and instead drew a series of triangles and small boxes, with some of the finer details noted but not necessarily in their correct places.  The report notes, "Her approach was to start at the top and work her way down rather than conceptualizing the outer gestalt." (I should note that I drew this version after my official test results had been recorded.)  The figure is made purposely overly complex so that nobody but a savant would remember and be able to reproduce the full shape and details perfectly, by the way.  Still, "As a result, her overall drawing was impaired compared to similar adults and does suggest difficulty with complex visual assessment."  I can't stress enough how true that last bit is.  Most visually complex art is wasted on me. 

The tests were drawn from a larger collection of tests called the Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System.  Specifically, my notes and the report say I did the Color-Word Interference Test, followed by the Trail-Making Test, followed by the Tower Test.  

Color-Word Interference Test

The Color-Word Interference test is a variation on the Stroop effect.  Which is to say, they timed how quickly I could identify colors as shown to me on cards ( ), then how quickly I could read the words of colors (blue), and then how quickly I could read the color of the text that spelled out a different color's name (orange).  The correct answer for all these examples is "blue" but it's harder for a person to read the color of a word, rather than the text of the word.  Now imagine doing that when presented with tons of these:

Apparently I only made two mistakes, but those mistakes knocked my score down below average for my age.  Meh.  

Trail-Making Test

The Trail-Making Test is a test of following a sequence while adhering to rules.  You're given a page with the letters A-M and numbers 1-13 on it, and are then told to draw lines from 1 to A, then A to 2, then 2 to B, all the way through the page, without crossing your own lines, until you connect 13 and M.  Here's an example of someone getting partway through a variation of this test:  
My particular test results noted, "...it was difficult for her to draw a straight line.  Most of her lines between the items were very shaky, wavy, almost 'bumpy' suggesting that even though she was able to conceptualize the task, her control of the pencil was less than expected for her age."  In retrospect, this is particularly funny to me because I already hold the pencil wrong (in four fingers, rather than three).  I do, however, have a hand tremor when riled up, so maybe that was the problem.  Or maybe it was just that I'm kind of garbage at fine motor control to begin with.

Tower of Hanoi

The Tower Test I remember most because I ended up sitting on my left hand for a good portion of it.


You had a set kind of like this, in different configurations, and were expected to stack the pieces with the smallest on top, expanding to the largest on the bottom.  You may only move one piece at a time.  This is a test of executive functioning, or your ability to coordinate and plan your actions as well as carry them out.  About midway through, though, my interest in trying to solve the puzzle overrode my memory of the "one piece at a time" rule, and I snagged two pieces, intending to move them one after the other.  After that was called out as not allowed for the second time, I simply sat on one hand, thus disabling my ability to accidentally violate the rule again.

There were nine of these puzzles, and I scored about average on all of them save the last, which I didn't finish. The test results note that I spent a lot longer trying to finish the puzzle than most people do, which the psychologist charitably explained as, "great perseverance and hard work ethic, even when she is unable to complete something easily."

The psychologist in question didn't know me, so she was mostly unaware that a lot of my life has been marked by difficulty.  This puzzle being "not easy" was just another in a long line of challenges, and one with relatively few poor side effects if I didn't succeed.  As I recall, I didn't lose interest in trying to figure out the test.  The psychologist actually suggested to me that we could move on to another test unless I thought I had the solution in mind.

"Perseverance" is the word my mother uses, and the clinical word the psychologist used.  I tend to be more perverse and stick to "stubbornness," personally.  It's part a point of pride and part a personal reminder that being persistent is not always a good thing.

TOPS

The next test was more socially-focused, rather than a test of how well my brain worked.  The test was a series of interpersonal situations followed by questions about each situation.  The contents were mostly problem solving, or "how does this person feel in this situation," or "how does this apply to this other situation?"  An example was something along the lines of, "Mary, a 13 year old girl, lives with her father.  Her father remarries and the new wife has a 10 year old daughter, who will be coming to live with them.  How does Mary feel about sharing a room?"  

I should note, before I give my scores, that the TOPS test only scores up to age 17.  Why 17?  I have no idea.  I was almost 20.5 years old when I took the test, too, which makes me wonder if the test results might've been off a bit... but never mind.  Cognitively, and in my ability to draw inferences regarding situations, I maxed out the test, scoring at 17 years old.  For determining solutions to the situations I was presented, I only scored at 15 years old, and my ability to communicate insights was at 16 years old.  Here's the kicker: when interpreting other peoples' perspectives in the given situations, I only scored at 14 years old.  

Basically, taking others' perspectives was a lot harder, and understanding emotions and others' emotional responses was difficult.  I'd like to think I've improved since then, and... I think I have, but again, without retaking the same test, I couldn't say.  

IVA

This is the test that really tired me out.  The Integrated Visual and Auditory Continuous Performance Test involved you looking at a computer screen, with big bulky headphones.  You needed to click the mouse whenever the correct number (either 1 or 2, it changed) showed on the screen or was pronounced through the headphones.  The graphics were very simple, white numbers on a black screen, and the task mind-numbingly boring.

"Mind-numbingly boring" is a particularly apt description, because by the end of it, I really wanted a break and/or to do literally anything else.  I recall them asking how I thought I'd done on the test.  Somewhat over-optimistically, I said I thought I'd done okay.  It turns out my visual score was utterly abysmal.  I scored in the lowest 5% on that test, which effectively makes me a dunce on that end of things.  At least I scored about average on the auditory part.  

MCMI

The last test was more to root out any marked signs of mental illness than anything else.  The Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory asks a series of kind of obvious (to me) questions about your tendencies and personality type.  I tried to answer as honestly as possible, without leaning too hard on the obvious: I felt like I was kind of depressed and overstressed.  I'm not sure whether I succeeded in being objective, but regardless, the results came back as "clinically elevated levels of anxiety with depressive features."  I was not noted to have major depression at the time (though actually, I would later slide into and out of major depression next year during finals).  Nothing else was of serious note, apparently.

Results

Interesting as the tests were to me, the whole point was the results.  So, from the report, I was given five diagnoses: Asperger's Syndrome, ADHD, Cognitive Disorder (Not Otherwise Specified, concerns in visual processing and complex visual motor integration), Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and Dysthymia.  In more plainspeak: I'm autistic, they think I have mild impulsivity issues, my brain doesn't process what my eyes see very well, everything makes me nervous, and I'm mildly depressed and probably will be for a very long time.  

The report ends with a list of recommendations, which include "further testing," "join our therapy sessions," and "maybe get some drugs to help with the anxiety?"  The precise wording for the last, which I took exception to, was "Ms. Frisch may wish to speak with her physician regarding possible anti-anxiety medication to 'take the edge off...'"  The anti-depressant drugs (note: same drugs as anti-anxiety drugs) tend to be over-prescribed, and the process of finding the correct one can be likened to playing a game of roulette with one's health.  Some people get lucky and respond well to the very first one, and others spend months to years suffering from bad side effects from each successive drug.  Things like "ballooning weight gain," "complete loss of sex drive," and "worsening symptoms of the original problem," are included.  

I recognize that these medications offer many people improved health and welfare, and respect the people that choose to embark on that process despite the drawbacks.  Personally?  "Taking the edge off" was insufficient reason to throw myself headfirst into that kind of roulette game.  Honestly, those four words might be the exact reason I forewent further treatment or analysis at the company at the time.  

(The very back of the last page includes raw test results for all the tests above, but as I'm not a trained clinical psychologist with familiarity of all these tests and their scoring, I mostly can't read them or explain what they mean, so they've been excluded from this post.)

Wednesday, July 10, 2019

Legwork and Life, week of 7/10/19

This is Legwork and Life, where I track the legwork and opportunities in my career as an autistic advocate, and also describe parts of my adult autistic life, including my perspectives on everyday problems and situations.

I've been sick for the last week and a half with a summer cold.  It's sapped my energy and also made it hard to sleep, which is a really shoddy combination if you're trying to get better quickly. Apparently "quickly" is just not happening, though, because every time I think I'm getting better, I wake up just as sick or worse the next day.  It's just kind of been a bad month, since getting wound up from SGDQ, I just haven't recovered.  Neither has my buffer, which isn't helping my anxiety levels at all.

 

This is Toro.  I'm taking care of her for about a week and a half.  She is quite a handful.  She's a Pionus parrot, and she belongs to some friends who have to be out of the house for that long.  Parrots are social critters, and it's bad for them to be alone.  She's fully flighted, and is happiest being out of her cage for the whole day at a time.  So we've semi-parrot-proofed the downstairs for her.  

Taking care of her is an endeavor, and reminds me that I still have a lot of my own life stuff to sort out before my spouse and I adopt anything ourselves.  

In the meantime, other things occurred:


One of those same friends is into wild food, so we went berrying for black raspberries recently.  They're ripe now.  I actually had that container on the left entirely full, but they're tasty.  So I've been eating them, feeding them to friends, and trying to feed them to Toro.  She's not impressed so far.  

I am, though.  They're mainly sweet, but there's some tang and tart mixed in.  When I was little, I'd found these and pointed them out to my mother, who told me they were safe.  After a certain age, I didn't put things in my mouth that I wasn't sure about, so it was cool to be able to just wander into the woods and find these in my first neighborhood in Minnesota.  I had no idea they were called black raspberries, just that they were tasty and you had to fight with thorns to get at them.  I never collected a ton, and of course they don't last forever.  

This time, my friend and I went prepared.  I'd read in a book to have your container fastened around your waist, so you can use both hands for picking, so I rigged up some string, tape, and the rectangular container there.  The thorns definitely had their say, and I had to pry a few off me in the course of gathering.  I was also still sick at the time, so I had to take rests quite regularly, which was disappointing as it wasn't exactly hard work.  Lots of bending over, but not really jumping jacks or even running.  


Still, can't argue with the payoff.  I had a small bowl of berries in addition to this cereal for breakfast.  Tomorrow my spouse will make summer salad, which is kind of what you get if you mix fruit salad with green leafy salad with herb baked chicken and top the whole thing with flax seeds and slivered almonds.  It was an odd concept for me at first, but I can't argue with the delicious results.  Normally he'd just use raspberries or blackberries from the store, but since we have these, why not use them?  They're maybe a quarter to a third the size of store raspberries, but they're packed with flavor and nutrition.  

Probably a lot moreso than their domestic cousins, actually.  Modern crops tend to be grown in nutrient-poor soil.  They plant the same crops there year after year, and only plant one type of plant, which all uses the same nutrition out of the same soil.  After a few years, the soil's nutrition is gone, but in modern farming, you don't let that stop you from planting again the next year... or the year after, or the year after.  So you get crops with poor nutritional content.

Wild stuff, on the other hand, grows alongside tons of other types of plants, which have varying nutrient requirements but also put back some kinds of nutrition into the soil.  So you get good, healthy, nutrient-filled soil, which grows these black raspberries into little nutritional powerhouses.  

Monday, July 8, 2019

Reading the Research: Beyond Mouse Models

Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.

Today's article represents a probable step forward in all kinds of brain-related research.  The jargon and specific language in this article is plentiful, so to summarize: researchers at Harvard have basically discovered a way to grow specific human brain cells.  It's been possible in the past to grow brain cells, but not to control that growth in a useful way.  Assuming the technique is valid and can be reproduced, it may soon be possible to grow brain cells from living humans with brain-related conditions or diseases.  Those cells can then be grown into clusters and used in experiments without harming the human donor.  

Basically, assuming this method works, we could kiss mouse models of autism  goodbye forever.  This would be fantastic.

I haven't written a whole lot on mouse models, which are, for now, the main way researchers have been trying to understand and experiment with autism.  But my complaint (which is accurate, by the way) is that while mice are excellent creatures and can teach us many things, autism doesn't have a singular cause or even a few causes, so any mouse model is not going to be a good representative.   The thing is, we can't just experiment willy-nilly on humans, because of pesky things like "human rights," "ethics," and "morals." ( <- sarcasm)  So mouse models are what researchers have mainly had available to work with.  

Replacing those with actual human brain cells would make for much more accurate representations of autistic people.  That makes for better science, and in turn, more valid, accurate results.  We already have genetic databases of thousands of autistic children and adults.  Imagine if we had databases of brain cells, too.  You could run broad tests across a dizzying variety of autistic people, seeing what anti-depressants, nutritional supplements, and other treatments were likely to work for the broad population.

More relevantly to parents and autistic adults, you could, for a price, grow cells into a cell cluster, and try various interventions on those cells.  The treatments that seem to help, you could then take home and try yourself.  It could make the Russian roulette of anti-depressants a thing of the past.  It could save a lot of money, a lot of pain, and a lot of time.

Needless to say, I really hope this method works, and can be done cheaply, very soon.

(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn't get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)

Friday, July 5, 2019

Constantly Wound Up

Recently, I remotely attended an event called Summer Games Done Quick.  It's basically a convention for a subset of video game players, and it raises money for charity.  Literally, every penny they raised this time went to Doctors Without Borders.  (They raised a lot of pennies, I'll get to that later.)

I found myself in kind of an interesting mental state during the event, so I thought I'd discuss it a bit.

So, this convention was unlike most of the ones I've attended, in that it more or less had no breaks.  First, it was literally a 24 hour a day event.  There was always something happening.  Most conventions have events until dinner time, and then you're done for the day.  But also, when you attend a convention in person, you have to tend to your physical needs, like using the bathroom, eating, etc.  Because you're away from home, these things take time, which you would use to mentally unwind a bit.  

There was none of that during this virtual event.  You could take the event with you to the bathroom and to the dinner table.  You probably SHOULDN'T, as I was to learn, but you could.  I normally don't watch much TV, or even livestreams, but I made an exception for this event.  

The results were interesting.  I experienced a kind of mental static, a distracting hum of sorts, when I wasn't immediately listening to the event or doing something else on my computer.  This was particularly obvious after watching for a couple hours straight.  I'd take off my headset to go to the bathroom and hear it.  Or maybe feel it, I'm not really sure.  The hum came with brain fog, reduced mental capabilities, and snappishness, though both of those might also be because I didn't sleep terribly well.

Besides the unusual schedule, where someone was always playing something, my brain also seemed wired, like it only slept reluctantly.  When I woke up, I was near-immediately awake, and usually only after 6 hours or so.  Combined with the weirdness of my bedtimes (sometimes after 2am), it was... not a healthy situation.  

That's possibly why I got sick with a cold... though I'd be more inclined to say I probably already had the cold and the unhealthiness of my sleep schedule simply exacerbated my symptoms.

In addition to the cold virus, I got a lot of exposure to various kinds of people and various kinds of video games.  It was pretty cool to see so many gender non-binary people.  There were various guys with long hair, people who specified their pronouns before starting their speedruns, and people who presented as neither male nor female or some mix of both.  And of course, there were people of color and people from other countries represented in this mostly-US event.  

I think next year I'm going to have to very selective about what I watch.  It was really fun to see a lot of the things, but I don't think I want to be this tired or this sick again in January, when the event goes again.  I didn't cancel any of my regular life events, but I still became this tired and sleep-deprived, so something definitely needs to change for next time.

It was a really successful run this time, though.  The previous record for a Games Done Quick drive was $2.2 million, and this year they got over $3 million, all of which went directly to Doctors Without Borders.  Seeing everyone get so jazzed up at the live event was kind of awesome, although it made me very glad I wasn't there due to the sheer noise levels.  People were VERY happy, and VERY loud.

It's taken me a few days to get back to normal.  I might not quite be there yet, even now, honestly.  There's at least some truth to "don't watch TV for hours, it's bad for you."  Still, most of my symptoms are cold symptoms now, I think.  The static's gone, and I'm less crabbity and grumpy.  Hopefully soon the cold will go away and I can get entirely back to the usual life.  

Wednesday, July 3, 2019

Legwork and Life, week of 7/3/19

This is Legwork and Life, where I track the legwork and opportunities in my career as an autistic advocate, and also describe parts of my adult autistic life, including my perspectives on everyday problems and situations.

I made pancakes!  





They're 1/3 cattail pollen, 2/3 whole grain flour pancakes.  I'm told not to go higher than 1/2 cattail pollen when baking, probably because baking is finicky.  Still, I was pleased with the results.  They did have a distinctive taste to my taste buds, but I couldn't really identify what it was.  I guess if we go collecting again next year, I'll need to get more and do a half and half recipe.  Either way, the yellow color these turned due to the pollen was quite pretty.  

Summer Games Done Quick is over.  It was quite an experience, and I'll talk about it this Friday.  Suffice it to say, it was exhausting, many gamers went home very happy, and Doctors Without Borders is going to receive a lot of money to provide medical services all over the world.  So basically everybody wins, at least after I rest up.  

I'm still doing the experiments with the grounding pad, but the results aren't as dramatic as I was hoping.  Real science often isn't.  I didn't really have results from having the grounding pad's connectivity changed from day to day, so I'm in the process of trying it with one week on, one week off.  Double-blind, so at the moment I have no idea whether it's plugged in.  I'm merely documenting my results until both weeks are over.

...It occurs to me that not everyone has a background in psychology, so: Double-blind experiments are ones where the full conditions of the experiment are hidden from both researchers and subjects.  This is to prevent either group from making assumptions, and from those assumptions affecting the data.  

In this case, I kind of expect to sleep better when the grounding mat is plugged in.  That's my assumption, which biases me towards putting more favorable results for my sleep if I know the mat is plugged in.  Therefore, I should not be told whether the mat is plugged in.  That's "single blind" in this experiment.

My spouse is helping me.  Kind of being my research assistant, he's the one plugging in and unplugging the grounding mat.  He knows, therefore, the status of the mat, but not what results I've been getting from my sleep.  This ignorance to the results of the experiment is the "double blind" in the experiment.  The whole experiment, having both of these, is therefore "double blind."  

Last thing, I picked up a cold somewhere.  I was originally assuming it was an allergic reaction to the new nut butter I've been trying, or to the cattail pollen... but the progression is pretty unmistakable by now.  Fuzzy head and slightly scratchy throat, leading to sniffy nose, leading to massively stuffed up nose, leading to hacking cough (my current location), which eventually fades away (hopefully soon!).  I've frozen the last of my cattail pancakes, just in case, but I don't expect a reaction when I eat them in a couple weeks.  

Monday, July 1, 2019

Reading the Research: Preparing Our Children

Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.

Today's article points out a helpful method for combating the rising levels of mental illness in our young people: giving them the tools they need to handle it, as soon as possible.  

I studied psychology in college, and one of the many things it taught me was that the many and varied forms of psychotherapy available to the public... mostly didn't work.  We learned roughly a dozen schools of thought regarding the understanding and healing of the human mind.  They ranged from charmingly idealistic to deeply cynical.  

Of that dozen, only two stood the test of scientific rigor.  The human mind is a complex and difficult thing, but these two schools of thought showed in study after study, that they reliably helped people process, understand, and move beyond their traumas and life events.  

Cognitive psychology was one.  It focuses on changing how you think about yourself, your life, and people and events around you.  It gives you mental tools to wield against the stresses and traumas of your life.  By changing the way you view situations and people, you can identify toxic situations, stress points, and self-care options.  That knowledge can let you better your life and how you handle your life.  

Behavior psychology was the other.  It's had a few sub-schools of thought, but essentially, rather than focusing on the mind, it focuses on the behavior that springs from the mind.  It teaches you how to modify your behavior, regardless of your thoughts.  Training good habits, like regular hygiene, or speaking a certain way, are part of this school of thought.  Getting rid of bad habits is another part.  Predicting behavior within systems (like your workplace or home) is still another.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy is the inevitable combination of those two schools of thought.  Once it was known that both worked, it was a very short logical leap to assume both should be tried at once.  The results bear this out. 

The normal pattern with psychotherapy is that a person tends to ignore the option of psychological help until they reach a breaking point, after which they get help and hopefully recover.  This is fine, except for the fact that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.  

Thus, the idea of teaching CBT techniques to children who are likely to need them.  Obviously, some of the ideas have to be made simpler for children to grasp, and some ideas simply have to wait until some cognitive functions have developed.  Still, giving at-risk children any of these tools before they develop severe depression, anxiety, and systemic chronic stress, would be invaluable to their development and health.

Y'know what this study doesn't mention?  The benefits of having children educated in mental health issues.  Say an autistic child is trained in how to recognize and handle depression.  That child will do better in their personal fight against depression, but they may also notice when friends show similar symptoms, and be able to offer practical and useful advice to those friends.  On the whole, you get healthier schools and healthier children.  Those children become healthier adults.  Everyone wins.  

(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn't get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)