Marriage, babies and mental health

[qwerty south]

i am a registered mental health nurse (not currently practicing).

education in school is important : how to look after our own (mental) health (and look out for those we know) - encouraging moderation in our drug-crazed culture.
confidence-building should be a cornerstone of education.

improving school / hospital food: re-nationalisation is needed. bring back the free daily milk.

also, divorce is associated with wealthy areas (surrey u.k) as is autism (in 2003 a study in a district of surrey showed autism amongst three year old boys was running at 1 in every 69 children!)

this guy should be minister for health: dr anthony daniels aka theodore dalrymple aka the best living writer in the english language.

check out his writing:

http://www.city-journal.org/html/7_1_oh_to_be.html

more:

http://www.city-journal.org/author_index.php?author=47

 

[bassnation]

also, divorce is associated with wealthy areas (surrey u.k) as is autism (in 2003 a study in a district of surrey showed autism amongst three year old boys was running at 1 in every 69 children!)

wtf? really? how interesting.

i know i'm asking you to speculate here, but why do you think this is?

 

[qwerty south]

the divorce rate was blamed on the commuter lifestyle etc (highest divorce rate in europe = surrey or guildford)

the autism rate in east surrey was blamed on computer programmers mating - i read on the net that the autism rate in west surrey (near me) was zero?!?!!!

 

[droid]

the autism rate in east surrey was blamed on computer programmers mating

The same thing is happening in silicon valley as well.

Is this to be the fate of the common nerd? Forced through lack of social skills to inbreed with their own and as a result, destroying their own gene-pool?

 

[bassnation]

the divorce rate was blamed on the commuter lifestyle etc (highest divorce rate in europe = surrey or guildford)

the autism rate in east surrey was blamed on computer programmers mating - i read on the net that the autism rate in west surrey (near me) was zero?!?!!!

i guess that makes sense - historically, theres quite a few people with aspergers in IT - bill gates has a mild form iirc.

having said that, this view of IT is becoming outdated - theres all kinds of people working in it these days, some of whom have normal social lives and aren't typical nerds.

and also, surely if peoples social skills are that bad from aspergers, they wouldn't have much luck finding a mate anyway - let alone someone else with the same condition.

 

[tryptych]

i guess that makes sense - historically, theres quite a few people with aspergers in IT - bill gates has a mild form iirc.

having said that, this view of IT is becoming outdated - theres all kinds of people working in it these days, some of whom have normal social lives and aren't typical nerds.

and also, surely if peoples social skills are that bad from aspergers, they wouldn't have much luck finding a mate anyway - let alone someone else with the same condition.

There's some signs that autism/aspergers is more about a varying degree of symptoms rather than an on/off disorder - this is what Simon Baron-Cohen thinks with his "autism is hyper-maleness" theory. I don't think I agree with him, but there's some studies that show that parents (who are not diagnosed autistic/aspergers) with autistic kids score higher than average on tests which indicate autistic behaviours.

My point being that you don't have to be full-blown aspergers, but if you end up having kids with someone of a similar level of social skills to you (which I guess is pretty likely) the chance of autisim/aspergers in the next generation increases.