Reading the Research: Dismantling the Medication Merry-Go-Round

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 is a far, theoretical hope for streamlining medical prescriptions for depression.  I've commented about my horror of prescription drugs for depression, I think, though I don't recall any particular post to link you to.  In brief summary: we don't really know why these medications work or don't, finding the right one is a matter of luck and perseverance, the side effects of some of them are truly terrible, and there are other, less risky therapies available. 

There isn't all that much to be done for the side effects thing... nor, right now, the lack of knowledge as to why specifically these medications work.  And at present, the US medical industry is very stuck on pushing pills for everything.  So alternative therapies, like LENS (neurofeedback) and dietary/gastrointestinal changes, will continue to fall by the wayside in the mainstream. 

However, apparently scientists are busily trying to find a way to make the medication merry-go-round be less of a luck-based thing, and more of a science.  You see, there are dozens of prescription drugs that can treat depression.  Finding one that works for you is the hard part. 

The study uses mouse "models" of depression, or specially bred lab mice with specific traits desirable to research... in this case, the tendency to be depressed.  I'm not overfond of these model studies, as I tend to think the results are dubiously translatable to people... but in this case, the researchers did actually try to make comparisons between their test subjects (mice) and actual live depressed people in their care. 

So basically, they think they've discovered specific reactions to each antidepressant, which indicate whether that antidepressant will be effective or not.  If they're right, they could simply match a patient to a set of specially bred mice, and test a dozen antidepressants at once on the mice.  If any drugs are particularly effective, the patient would try that first.  Essentially, if this idea proves effective, getting on the right antidepressant could stop being a merry-go-round. 

Given how many autistic individuals suffer from depression, whether that's from repeated peer rejection, the knowledge that we'll never be normal, messed up gut bacteria, or some other biological cause, having the ability to simply prescribe the right antidepressant the first time would be invaluable to a large percentage of us, and other people, who suffer depression.

An Open Letter to Autism Research Scientists

This open letter comes about because I've been reviewing research applications for the DOD's autism research grant program.  As I am restricted from putting my precise feelings to paper by various guidelines, I'm going to settle with summarizing them here, and then spend the time formatting my objections according to the government's guidelines.

I can't, according to the terms of the job, discuss anything specifically found in these applications I'm reading... but I don't have to, because I have a lot of things to say about the general content and focus of them... 

Dear Autism Researchers,

Please, please, please stop using overly obtuse language in your research papers and applications.  I recognize you have specialized concepts to convey, and those things have names, but there's a difference between conveying concepts and using words like "elucidate," "bioenergetics," and "sensorimotor" all in the same sentence.  There is also a difference between trying to convey a concept quickly, and inventing or using unnecessary acronyms.  Seriously, sounding like you swallowed a dictionary and are now throwing it back up onto a paper does not make you look smarter.  It makes you look pretentious.  It makes you look like your ego is the only thing that matters to you, and your research is just a vector for showing off.  This is triply true when you're writing a lay abstract, which is meant for non-scientists. 

Oh, I know, "It's just the style of how papers are done!"  Well, let me ask you this: Are you, or are you not, people dedicated to advancing human knowledge and discovering new, better, different ways of doing things?  If so, why are you making it harder for everyone, including other researchers, to understand you?  You should also keep in mind that your research is no longer sequestered in your hallowed institutions and universities.  Parents of children on the autism spectrum read your papers, and autistic people like myself do as well.  These are our lives you're researching.  We want to understand what you're doing, too, and we shouldn't need a PhD to do it.  Stop making it harder for us!  Autism may seem like an intellectual puzzle to you, but it's a difficult reality for us, and the more we can work with you and your research to improve the world and our lives, the better.

I've said we need you, and that's true.  Researchers are the driving force behind progress toward a better world for everyone.  But you should also keep in mind that you need us.  Talk to us.  Learn from us.  We know autism like you never will.  While you fiddle with your animal models, your mitochondria, and your genetic patterns, we are living and suffering and thinking about all of it.  We have ideas for research, too, and you are missing them by spending all your time in laboratories, with each other, in academic echo chambers.

One very specific idea most of you keep missing is that the question "what causes autism?" is now unimportant when placed beside the vast and desperate need for the answer to, "what helps people with autism live better?"  You've had more than 20 years to research "what causes autism?" and the underlying mechanisms, genetic factors, environmental factors, etc.  You still don't have solid answers.  The average age of someone on the autism spectrum is now 18.  That is the age where we either start into the real world, or we start falling through the cracks because our support services through school ended.  Guess which of these options happens a lot more?

Quit trying to find out what causes autism.  We, the autistic community, already exist with autism.   Even if you found the "what causes it" tomorrow, it won't undo our suffering, or improve our lives in any real way.  We care about getting effective therapies for our problems.  We care about having good social supports, and programs to help us get jobs and have social lives.  I will literally yell this from rooftops if I have to, and some of you are going to get an earful when I get to Washington D.C. this January.  Try to listen.  I will try to be polite and listen to you in return.

Speaking of politeness, could you please try not to refer to autism as a disease?  I, personally, am fine with the word "disability," though it misses the fact that autism has also given me strengths.  I've seen some researchers use the phrase "Autistic Spectrum Conditions," which I found interesting, and perhaps that would be the most respectful way to refer to us.  You see, while most of you are busy training magnifying glasses on all the disabilities and problems autism can come with, we've built our own culture and understanding of autism.  You just haven't been listening to us.

To some of us, autism is not an ailment we suffer from, it's a condition that is fundamental to who we are.  We've built communities around it, and understanding it and ourselves.  We tend to have some good traits in common, such as honesty.  We tend to value expertise and skill.  You might, in fact, consider autism our cultural heritage, in that sense.  Think of it like how African American people have a cultural heritage.  So some people, myself included, get a bit irate when all of that is dismissed as a "disease."  Particularly if the word "cure" comes into the picture.  "Healing" and "reversing" and "erasing" are really not much better.  Please be respectful of the people you're trying to help. 

Sincerely,
Sarah Frisch
The Realistic Autistic

Legwork and Life, week of 12/27/17

Merry Christmas (or happy holidays, if you prefer).  I hope you had a decent set of holidays so far.

I started my holiday season rather badly, though it seems to be improving by now, fortunately...

The "started badly" refers to just before Christmas #1.  We have three Christmases this year, the first of which was on the 22nd.  That morning, my support tablet broke.  Not because I dropped it, but because something fell on it.  I'd brought it to the gym, where I exercise with my parents, and someone had balanced a weight somewhat precariously on a machine.  I hadn't noticed it, so I set my tablet down to use the machine... and then the weight fell, smashing the screen right through the protective screen cover.

I've written, in the past, about what losing my tablet does to me.  Longtime readers will recall these entries, where I talk about how much of my life and sanity balances on having it around, so I don't get lost while driving, can remember my appointments, relax with music or silly phone games, or simply check my email or update my blog on the fly.  Without those things, my quality-of-life degrades significantly.

This incident was particularly upsetting to me because the last thing we need right now is another expense.  House-hunting, closing costs, inspections, and even putting down an offer, are all expensive propositions.  So having yet another cost added on top of this, after all the effort we'd gone through to protect this tablet, was intensely frustrating.  Never mind that this tablet was supposed to be a back up tablet, just acting as the primary tablet until we could afford to buy a better one.  For this one to break, and so soon... was just adding insult to injury.  So I basically just kind of sat there and cried for a few minutes, which is generally the last thing I would want to do in public.

That pretty much ended the exercise session, and after considering the situation, I moved the offending weight away from the machine, where it wasn't doing any good anyway, and into a corner, where it couldn't drop on any toes or electronics.  Chris and I then left to mull matters over.  Or, I guess, for me to mull matters over, because his very first spoken thought was, "we need to replace that, it's very important to you and your quality of life." It took me longer to come around, because this is the fourth tablet in 6 years, which is a lot of money even if the breakages haven't been my fault most of the time.

I wasn't even close to fully recovered from that incident when Christmas part 1 ensued.  My uncle and aunt were in town, having traveled from Boston, and my grandmother got a ride to my parents' place, where we all gathered together.  Mostly the afternoon and evening was spent chatting.  Very much a neurotypical event.  I was able to hold together well enough to manage a conversation, particularly since no one gave me grief about trying to put my life back together.  (I spent a large portion of the time there desperately trying to configure my replacement tablet as quickly as possible.  Getting the settings right, then finding and downloading all the apps, then telling each app who I was, then setting up the location of the apps on the tablet...  it all takes time.  And looks very antisocial.)

Anyway, dinner ensued afterwards, which was tasty.   I assume the event was a success, as everyone except me seemed reasonably happy at the end of it.  I pled a brutal headache, which was quite true, and apologized for being out of sorts, and people didn't seem to mind, so that basically ended Christmas part 1.

Between Christmas part 1 and Christmas part 2 was a very long road trip.  Chris and I rotate driving these days, with breaks to get out, stretch, and walk around a bit.  It was still a really long trip, but at least we made it.  No thanks to the winter storm that followed us all the way to the outskirts of our destination.  That was the most interesting thing about the trip, though, thankfully.

Christmas part 2 was just yesterday, with Chris' immediate family.  Both of his brothers were in attendance, and while it wasn't nearly as organized as my family tends to be, it was no less cheerful for that.  Chris' mother has made lots of efforts to make me comfortable, which is very thoughtful of her considering the strain of the travel and the loss of my tablet.  I'm currently hiding in the bedroom set aside for us, which has three of those silly Himalayan salt lamps that are supposed to clean the air, plus an actual machine that cleans the air.  The room itself is kept quite warm, too, which is a kindness as the rest of house is almost invariably freezing.

The usual outpouring of presents ensued, which included generous portions of candy, cookies, and snacks.  I'm trying very hard not to eat myself into another 10 pounds of fat on my thighs, but it's really difficult.  And of course there's been plenty of food, pretty much all of it delicious.  I got to walk people through how to make some modular origami stars, as well, which resulted in some pretty decorations.

Christmas part 3 is an extended family gathering for Chris' side of the family, and should ensue in a few days.  There are also plans to see the new Star Wars movie, and of course the drive home near New Year's.  Should be interesting.  

Reading the Research: Communication Via Smell

(Merry Christmas.  Hope the holidays treat you well.)

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 form of social communication most people take entirely for granted: smells.  This is kind of an odd study, but it's interesting, so bear with me.  The researchers wanted to see how autistic people and normal people reacted to two specific types of scent communication. 

For those entirely unfamiliar with this line of research, like myself, apparently fear has a smell, as does relaxation.  The effect is measurable, but the scent itself is apparently not identifiable or recognizable by a casual sniff.  People react to it all the same, however.

The subjects were exposed to two different sweat smells: one collected from people learning how to skydive, and thus laced with fear, and the other collected from people who were merely exercising, and thus calm. 

While I would have expected the autistic participants of the study to be oblivious to the "scent meanings" in the sweat smells, something more interesting happened.  Instead, the autistic participants received exactly the opposite message.  The fear-laced sweat made the autistic participants calmer, and the "calm" sweat made them more nervous.  The researchers suggest some pathways were somehow reversed in the brain development of autistic people.

This brings to mind some of the stories John Elder Robison wrote about, where he commented that he was a good person to be around in a crisis.  While other people would get stressed out and angry or afraid, he stayed calm and did reasonable things, like calling the police, assessing how badly people were injured, etc.  I now wonder how much of that ability to keep calm and be reasonable was because of this effect, the internal misreading of the smell of fear. 

Naturally, it doesn't really matter: the people he helped were helped, regardless of why he was able to do what he did.  And perhaps this tendency makes autistic people rather valuable in terms of emergency services and similar situations.  

Book Review: Healing Our Autistic Children

Healing Our Autistic Children: A Medical Plan for Restoring Your Child's Health, by Dr. Julie A Buckley, is a cross between a "my family's story of autism" book and a "this is my professional opinion on how to treat autism."  I've seen plenty of the former, and at least a dozen of the latter, but not a cross between them 'til now.

The author is a pediatrician, and of course, the mother of an autistic child.  The book itself is more heavily slanted toward "this is my professional opinion on how to treat autism."  Interestingly, it comes with a personal look into how biomedical doctors are viewed and treated by other doctors.  (Spoiler: not well.)

This is perhaps unsurprising, as the neurodiversity movement and much of medical world views autism as the result of a brain difference (or disorder, depends on who you ask), and only that.  Biomedical doctors tend to view autism as a medical problem, and only that.  Both sides think the other side is deluded and wasting resources better spent helping autistic people using their methods.

I tend to read these biomedical books with a certain amount of annoyance, tempered with patience.  Words like "healing" and "reversing" and "erasing" are just ways of avoiding the word "cure."  They do that because saying "cure" around the neurodiversity community tends to produce rather rabidly unfriendly responses.

To understand why that is... imagine you could go into someone's genetics, and change their genetic heritage.  You could turn an African American person into a white person.  Now, it's well-established that black people in the US get a really raw deal.  Words like "school-to-prison pipeline" and "racial profiling" and "police brutality" come up pretty often.  Now, if you offered the African American community the chance to become white, what do you think they'd say?

I'm not saying every last black person in the US would say no, and possibly rudely.  Some autistic people do want to not be autistic, especially if they suffer a lot from complications relating to it.  But to my mind, it's kind of the same question.  Asking "would you like to be cured?" is like asking someone if they would like part of their culture and personal identity ripped out of them.

Regardless of the exact cause of autism (still undetermined after dozens of years of research), I do think that being autistic is an identity thing, at least as much as it is a disability.  That perspective would likely horrify the author of this book, who likely defines autism as "all the gut problems, food intolerances, metabolism problems, and social difficulties my child/patient has to deal with."  I've commented on this tendency before.

The truth, as it often ends up, is probably somewhere between "autism is the differences in my brain and my personal culture" and "autism is a medical problem that needs to be cured."  I tend to favor, "Autism is a set of brain differences, no two quite the same, and is a culture as well as a diagnosis.  People with autism often have various health issues, depression, anxiety, and social difficulties.  These problematic things should be treated for best results, but the culture around us should also change to accept us, rather than us having to always change to fit in."  Which covers both camps, but satisfies neither.  I've been told the best compromises make no one happy, so maybe I'm winning?

Anyway, the author has a gift for metaphor, and she uses it well in service of describing her preferred treatments for autism.  These include supplementation, killing off any yeast infections, adopting the gluten-free/dairy-free diet, use of hyperbaric chambers, and chelation if needed.

I've discussed supplementation recently, so I'll leave that one alone.  I don't think I've ever commented on yeast infections, though.  I take probiotics regularly, and one of the things that does is keep a particular type of yeast, candida, under control.  Apparently people with autism can have a massive overgrowth of candida, which has disastrous effects on the intestines and the body in general.

The gluten-free, casein- (dairy) free diet is... kind of hard pill to swallow for most people.  Gluten is in most breads, grains, cereals, pastas, etc.  And dairy is in cheese, milk, ice cream, yogurt, etc.  Now, just imagine having to cut all of that out of your diet, all at once.  That's where this book recommends you start.  It has good reason to do so, and the author explains in decent enough detail.  I myself have gone mostly dairy-free, with good results.  I am still flatly refusing to try going gluten-free, though, because of how much of an intense headache it would be.

Hyperbaric chambers are those high pressure chambers they use to treat the bends in divers.  They help the body re-oxygenize at a much higher rate than normally possible.  This isn't the first book I've read that suggested they have good effects for autistic people and their parents, and it probably won't be the last.

I really don't have a decent opinion about chelation. There's a lot of conflicting stories being tossed around about its effectiveness and its danger level.  I would tend to suspect that it's a medical procedure, which can be dangerous to anyone under the right circumstances, and that it probably shouldn't be messed with if you don't know what you're doing.  This book has a guide to chelation, though it suggests it only if everything else isn't working as well as it should be.

The book's format is such that, when you go to see a pediatrician for your autistic child, you would take this book with you, having read the appropriate chapter.  It's structured around six doctor visits, in about as many chapters, and you can point to the various scientific descriptions, or read from parts to the book, to hopefully help your doctor understand what it is you want and why.

Woven in with all that are stories of the author's own child, and several other children she's treated in the course of her practice.  She seems to regard them all fondly, and as individuals rather than problems to be solved, which is points in her favor if you ask me.

Read This Book If

You're a parent of an autistic child, and you're interested in a primer on the basics of biomedical autism treatments.  This book is that, along with some personal stories and some very well-crafted metaphors to explain the complicated science.  It's fairly approachable, combining the standard "my family's story with autism" with the other standard, "my professional opinions about autism treatment."  It leans more towards the latter than the former, but explains its aims plainly and without being over-dramatic or pushy.  The author genuinely wants to help you by laying out what she knows, in a clear and digestible fashion.  

Legwork and Life, week of 12/20/17

The running from one deadline to the next continues!  It is now accompanied by slight whimperings and the occasional whine, but we have not yet descended into full-throated screams.  I'm hopeful that I'll manage Friday's entry before Thursday evening this week, but between the various last minute shopping, house-hunting, and the government consulting job, I'm feeling a bit pulled in all directions.

I'm almost done with my shopping list, which is excellent because we leave for CT on Saturday and that kind of makes a hard deadline for finishing that.  At this point I have just two presents left to buy, I think, and one of them I have no idea what to get, and the other needs to be bought about a day before it's actually given for best results.  I also have two sets of presents to drop off at their new homes, and another couple will politely send themselves when it gets closer to Christmas proper.

Maybe next year I should make a spreadsheet of people I'm giving gifts to, to help track them and make sure I don't forget anyone.  I keep having minor heart attacks when I remember someone I haven't shopped for yet and really need to to be socially appropriate.

I mentioned house hunting in the first paragraph.  We (Chris and I) are finally buckling down and doing some of that, with hopes to get out of this crap apartment complex and into a house or condo by the end of January.  Normally you'd take weeks or months doing this, but houses in my particular area tend to get snapped up in less than a week, even in winter.  We just got the letter of pre-approval on Monday, after the mortgage person literally went on vacation, dragging our application out across five days when it could have been handled in a couple hours.  Suffice it to say I am extremely unimpressed with our realtor's recommendation for this person...

The main reason I'm so annoyed about the whole thing, though, is that we actually visited a really nice two story house with a rather unique design and a sunroom.  It was built in the mid-80s, and basically featured an upstairs specifically designed to be a private lounge and bedroom, with lots of indoor storage and built in bookshelves.  The downstairs had high ceilings, another couple bedrooms, the expected kitchen, laundry room, dining room, etc.  It didn't have a basement, which was weird, but it was reasonably priced and quite comfy and inviting.  Before we could put an offer in, though, we thought we needed that letter of pre-approval.  Turns out you don't, but we didn't know that.  By the time we got the letter of pre-approval, the owner of the house had stopped accepting offers.  We're on the "very interested in these offers fall through" list, but realistically speaking, I think we're out of luck.

I am, despite myself, crushingly disappointed.  There's nothing to do but go see more and hope we can find something just as nice, though.  If anyone's interested, we (mostly I) made a complicated spreadsheet for house hunting based on something Chris' brother had made.  I'm willing to bet it's not ideal, but it covers a lot of what we're looking for, and generalizes across condos and houses.

It's probably confusing to just look at, so I'll explain.  The top has some basic statistics about the residence and a picture.  Below that on the right is a checklist of things to ask about during the showings we attend.  On the left is a long list of criteria we have for a house or condo, broken into two categories: scored and unscored.  Scored criteria get a rating out of 5, and that rating is then multiplied by how important we think that particular criterion is.  All those multiplied scores are added up and tracked at the bottom.   The unscored criteria are basically just yes/no questions, which are multiplied by 1, 2, or 3 depending on how valuable we consider that criterion.  And then, again, all those scores are added together and divided by the total possible score.

The scored criteria number is doubled, then added to the unscored criteria.  Finally, the whole number is divided by three to get a total out of 100.  Anything about a 60%, when all the information is filled out, seems to be a more promising choice.  But in the end, Chris and I are also following my mother's advice, which was to imagine yourself in the home, doing laundry, getting home from grocery shopping, etc, and see how well the place seems to suit those things.

In other news, yesterday I finished putting together a furniture thing, which should help with organizing my tea (already shown) and my craft supplies (not shown).

The blue things are those little square cloth boxes, and the shelf-thing here is literally designed specifically for them.  This was actually originally on my wedding registry, but it didn't get bought at the time.  So it got onto my Christmas list this year, and my mother-in-law kindly opted to purchase it for us this year.  Putting this thing together actually took longer than I thought it was going to, but it was kind of fun, so I guess that evens out.

In other-other news, I went to a little Christmas party for the adult autistic group, and we did a cookie exchange and watched the first episode of The Good Doctor.  For anyone who, like me, really doesn't watch TV, it's a medical drama type TV show, but featuring an autistic person as one of the main characters.  I'd heard it'd gotten good reviews and mostly positive support from the autistic community, so I was curious about the precise content.  Most depictions of autism I've seen haven't really been positive or particularly endearing.  I would probably call that first episode "somewhat heavy-handed," but "very promising."  In retrospect, I think it was also being very symbolic in a number of ways...

For instance, near the end of the episode, the autistic character is barred from entering the hospital after trying to go help a very badly injured person is a non-socially-acceptable way.  He tries very hard, finding every entrance to the hospital there is, but is always barred from entering.  In the end, someone from inside the hospital has to come get him, to get his help.  Kind of strikes me as how the real world deals with autistic people overall.  We can try very very hard and do our very best, and it's still sometimes not enough.  Sometimes someone on the inside (neurotypicals) have to open the way for you, even though the way shouldn't have been barred in the first place.

I'm sure dozens of people have picked apart this TV show in much more detail and with better background, but I, at least, think it seems promising.  If somewhat hard to watch.  As an autistic person with a lot of empathy and years of skills for reading people... I spent a good portion of the episode wincing over the autistic character's complete lack of social understanding, while knowing exactly why he did what he did.  I was also somewhat surprised by their choice of "functioning level" for the character.  They didn't really lean toward either extreme of autism.  The character was not like me- he couldn't pass for neurotypical for long, if at all.  But neither was he unable to communicate or do things for himself.  He was, more or less, right in the middle of the spectrum.

Perhaps, in my copious free time, I'll watch a few more episodes and write you a Friday post with a better breakdown of the characters and the portrayal of autism.  The show seems to be free to watch (but not ad-free, of course) on ABC. 

Reading the Research: Mirror Neurons and Depression

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 discusses mirror neurons and the effects of depression.  Since many autistic people suffer from various forms of depression, and its sibling anxiety, this seemed particular appropriate to pass on.

In brief, snarky summary:

For people without depression:  Good news!  Depression isn't infectious!  You can continue on with your daily life secure in the knowledge that socializing with depressed people will not hurt you in the long term.  You should, however, keep in mind that this means depression is more than a low mood, and as such telling someone who is depressed to cheer up is entirely pointless.  Be a listening ear and a supportive hand instead, knowing that you will walk away from this encounter and be just fine in a few hours.

For people with depression:  Good news.  Depression isn't infectious!  You can go on with your daily life knowing that you can't permanently drag someone down with you.  If you didn't already know, depression is a lot more than just being down, sad, or burnt out, and therefore, while your life is hard, you can be slightly less unhappy knowing that your existence can't make other people depressed.  Not everyone understands this, so you may still have to put up with thoughtless people telling you to cheer up.  Sorry about that.  You can always link this article to them, though.

Snark aside, I was personally kind of pleased to find out I wasn't a permanent drag on my friends, family, and acquaintances while I was growing up, and prior to getting decent help and therapy.  I suspect I'll never be the life of the party, of course.  But I do have memories of ruining a couple peoples' good moods over time, and while it never actually occurred to me that I might depress people by existing, the thought is frankly horrifying.  So it's nice to have it nipped in the bud.

That said, I suspect if I'd been asked whether depression was infection prior to reading this article, I'd probably have hazarded a negative answer.  Depression, as the article tells us, is much much more than a long-lasting sadness or poor mood.  Things like this prove that, but in all honesty, there are a lot of possible causes for depression.  Mine seems to have been at least partially biologically based, though I'm sure my situation didn't help either.  Being a square peg constantly being hammered into a round hole is painful and exhausting, after all.  Still, adding vitamin D, magnesium, NAC, and the other supplement supports has been an important step in improving my mood climate.

I should probably explain what I mean by "mood climate."  If you think of a person like a square mile of land, and imagine that mile of land somewhere in the world, you would need to also imagine the weather that rolls across it.  Are they depressed?  Then perhaps the area routinely gets a lot of thick clouds and rain.  Anger management problems?  Occasional thunderstorms.  If they're cheerful and happy a lot, perhaps the area gets a lot of sunlight as a rule.  If they're calm and laid-back, perhaps the area has gentle breezes sometimes.  All these things are the area's weather climate.  They're what you predict the weather off of.  They're general rules of thumb.

This is distinct from a person's current mood, which is much more variable and can change from moment to moment.  A person's current mood is somewhat dictated by their current situation.  A normally calm person can be riled up and spitting mad about the current politics.  So a field of grass, normally used to gentle breezes, might experience a thunderstorm.  That's normal enough.  Or a depressed person might have a really great day, and the sun shines brightly through thinned, or even dissipated clouds for a day.  Everyone has mood shifts over the course of the day, that's quite normal.

Within this analogy, I suppose in high school I'd've probably been a land cast in perpetual grey.  Sometimes the grey was brighter, and I could almost see beams of sunlight through the clouds.  Sometimes the rain fell extra hard from clouds so grey they were nearly black.  Thunderstorms occurred very frequently in middle school.  Strong winds blew regularly, making the rain batter the ground.

These days I'm probably more of a partly cloudy area, some sunshine and some shadow.  The wind is temperamental.  It's usually around, and tends to blow at a slow pace, but sometimes circumstances change and it blows a lot harder.  Sometimes rain falls, and thunderstorms happen, but they're less of a regular occurrence.