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Are Therapy and Accommodations Sufficient for Autism Empowerment?
Please note: The terms Aspie, ASD/Neurodivergent, and Autistics will be used to refer to people with Autism. A quick Google search for “supporting” or “empowering” Autistic people brings up pages recounting our impairments and suggested accommodations in education and employment. In the...
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Unspoken Injuries: Supporting Health Professionals Coping With Client Loss
“I was delighted to get my first consultant job working in an in-patient [psychiatric] unit… In my second week, I had my first patient die by suicide. In my third week, I had my second patient die by suicide. In my third month, there was a very distressing…death by suicide on the...
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Autism Gets an Update: A National Autism Strategy for Canadians
Note: While there are many areas of inequity, this article will focus on diagnosis and support services as seen by the Autistic writer living in Ontario, Canada. Autism in Canada One in 66 Canadians is autistic. Collectively, we face numerous challenges to accessing services and supports,...
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Nurturing Comfort: Sensory Processing Through an Autistic Lens
What grates on your nerves? The slurping sound made by an open-mouthed eater or by someone smacking gum and popping bubbles? What about ticking clocks? Or the coworker who repeatedly clicks their pen, ad nauseam? Why do such noises bother autistic people? Maybe it’s because stimuli and sensory...
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Teamwork: Building A Successful Neurodivergent-Neurotypical Marriage
As I sit down to write this, my husband and I just celebrated our 39th wedding anniversary. We met through a mutual friend - an ex-boyfriend of mine. Joseph and I had gone our separate ways a few months before I received a phone call from “Caper” (his chosen “call sign”). I was surprised by...
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Autism and the Law: When Trouble Comes Our Way
“I may have the advantage of race and gender. I may be able to stave off a meltdown for a short period. I may try my hardest to comply and be non-threatening, but I’m only ever one misunderstanding or nervous officer away from death. And it may be, in any given encounter, that there’s nothing...
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I Was Finally Diagnosed with High-Functioning Autism, Now What?
I suspected I was on the Autism Spectrum for over 20 years before I finally received a diagnosis. Like many people with high-functioning autism, my autism went unnoticed because I was intelligent enough to succeed in school and my autistic traits were not seen as neurodivergent, but as learning...
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Autism Advocacy: Inclusion, Empowerment, and Human Rights
“Autism isn’t this strange alien thing, it’s just a different way of thinking and experiencing the world. Some of us will find ourselves more or less compatible with modern living than others, we will all have different needs…but autism is not terrifying or awful, nor is it marvellous and...
