Library / Watch / Autistic Pride Day Symposium 2024
Lived experience, Autistic Pride Day Symposium 2024
Tourette’s, a childhood stroke and why one panellist chose to be the bridge
In short
In the closing session of the 2024 Sydney symposium, a panellist from Aspergers Victoria described conditions that complicate each other’s treatment, a childhood without support, and accepting a harder road for others.
Read it instead, 4 minutesThe transcript
The story
A panellist who works at Aspergers Victoria put a plain clinical problem to the closing session of the 2024 Autistic Pride Day Symposium in Sydney. The panellist has autism, ADHD and Tourette’s, and said there is no medication they can get, because treating one condition may make another worse. If the ADHD were medicated, they asked the room, “what’s it going to do to the Tourette’s?” They then put the same question another way, about what treating the autism would do to the ADHD.
The panellist had begun by saying they wanted to be vulnerable, and to end on a positive if they could. Some of the audience had already heard that they received their diagnosis early. Beyond the autism and the ADHD, they said, they have Tourette’s. Most people, they explained, know only the swearing form. They had that when they were younger and had to learn to control it. They described clicking in their sleep and doing other random things that they have also had to control.
Sign in to keep reading, listening and watching.
Sign in with your email and everything in the Library is open to you: every story, every talk and every episode. It is free and it always will be. If you can, a donation helps keep it free for everyone.
Sources the story draws on
- Lifetime Prevalence, Age of Risk, and Genetic Relationships of Comorbid Psychiatric Disorders in Tourette Syndrome (opens in a new tab), JAMA Psychiatry, vol. 72(4), p. 325 (Hirschtritt, Lee, Pauls and colleagues); record in the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory repository
- Elevated Rate of Autism Symptoms Found in Children with Tourette Syndrome (opens in a new tab), UC San Francisco News Center (Suzanne Leigh), reporting a study in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
- Pharmacological treatment for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children with comorbid tic disorders (opens in a new tab), Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2018, issue 6, CD007990 (Osland, Steeves and Pringsheim); full text on PubMed Central
More from Autistic Pride Day Symposium 2024
All 94-
6 minutes 30 seconds, captioned Sharon Zivkovic said autistic expectations had risen and called it a social movement Dr Sharon Zivkovic, Christina Chun Opening the closing session of the 2024 Sydney symposium, Dr Sharon Zivkovic said the bar for future autistic lives had been raised in two years. Participants then described what the two days had meant to them. -
5 minutes 55 seconds, captioned Autistic led does not mean autistic only, an AV panellist told Sydney Kyriakos Gold A founder diagnosed with ADHD three weeks earlier challenged the symposium’s red flag test for programs that are not autistic led. A panellist from Aspergers Victoria replied that the leadership did not have to be one person. - 1 minute 58 seconds, captioned Minds at Play, a contract critique and growth built from special interests Dwayne Fernandes At the Sydney symposium in 2024, Dwayne Fernandes of Minds at Play described an autistic employee whose critique of a contract fixed a problem for the business. A panellist explained using a game to start the conversation.
- 9 minutes 1 second, captioned Sleep, preparation and support workers, the hidden cost of attending an autism event Autistic Pride Day Symposium 2024 In the closing session of the 2024 Sydney symposium, a first time attendee asked for more talk about struggle. The replies described how much effort it takes to be in the room at all.
- 2 minutes 48 seconds, captioned Kyriakos Gold on unmasking at 48 and being told he does not look autistic enough Kyriakos Gold In the closing session of the 2024 Sydney symposium, Kyriakos Gold described the daily work of suppressing sensory pain, what unmasking had done to his composure, and the comments that called him a fraud.
- 4 minutes 57 seconds, captioned Especially hard to find if not a Caucasian cisgender boy, an activist said Autistic Pride Day Symposium 2024 In the last round of the 2024 Sydney symposium, participants spoke about who gets recognised, from masked adults to late diagnosed sisters, and what a full room changed for them.