Autistics and ODD vs PDA

----- summary

Any diagnosis of ODD or CD Conduct Disorder is very likely to harm an autistic child and make matters much worse for them and you. ODD is old conformist bad psychiatry in action, disappearing.

Any diagnosis of PDA for an autistic child - understood as a Pervasive Drive for Autonomy - may open-up understanding and strategy pathways for them, and you.

PDA is newer diverse better psychology in action, developing.

Autistics the world over say "Reject ODD, Consider PDA - do not let the for-profit DSM Manual ruin your child's life and leave you unable to cope."

If your health professional has far-right views or is moulded by being in a region dominated by far-right politics, it may be hard for them to budge from using ODD during their lifetime because of lack of imagination or limits thereof, and PDC Pervasive Drive for Conformity.

----- 1968 DSM II: Origins

Looking back with lovely hindsight now, we can see where that most ridiculous concept called ODD or Oppositional Defiant Disorder originated in three handy psychiatrist billing long-labels outlined in the DSM II, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders

(308.3, especially 308.4, 308.5, Pages 50-51, https://www.madinamerica.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/DSM-II.pdf).

These three long labels were directed at describing

- very naughty runaway children, 

- poorly socialized children with some aspects of disordered conduct, and

- children easily ruined by gang and gang-like influences. 

How much we have advanced from those darker days!

----- 1972 Meanwhile... PDA in the UK

In a nation that looked at autism through a psychological lens [Frith, Wing, wrong but not the worst] and not a psychiatric lens [Kanner, Rutter, very wrong yet still not the worst - worst is psychotherapist/sexologist lens!], Dr Elizabeth Newsom was considering what was going on with a bloc of children mainly described as 'atypically autistic', children who were anxious and demand avoidant, and from whose avoidance stemmed complete refusals, meltdowns, extreme unwillingness, actual inability to do things, and yet a certain responsiveness to genuine requests, requests where the correct answer is always --- equally --- 'yes' or 'no'.

For some, it was like "the terrible twos", endless refusals from some children aged about two, were continuing, but Newsom saw something else, internal and external coping mechanisms at play, even masterfulness in avoidance, a survivalism.

By 1997, so great was parent response to the eureka moments a description of PDA gave them - hope, that the PDA Society was formed.  However, the DSM firmly remained the self-interested domain of the APA American Psychiatric Association.  PDA, so urgently needed in the USA, had little to no means of impacting the DSM at the point.  The DSM would blunder on.

----- 1974-1980 DSM III: Definition

Back to the USA blundering on through their psychiatric lens.

Here, with 313.81 Oppositional Disorder, the condition was named and defined

(Pages 63-65, https://aditpsiquiatriaypsicologia.es/images/CLASIFICACION%20DE%20ENFERMEDADES/DSM-III.pdf)

What is mysterious is that these children have some of the features of Conduct Disorder, such as disobedience and opposition to authority figures and their commands, and yet they acknowledge the basic rights of others and the major age-appropriate societal norms or rules, whether suited to them or not.  Hmmm, maybe their issue is completely different than being oppositional or defiant.  Maybe they have a special need unrelated to conduct, behaviour, naughtiness.

----- 1994-2000 DSM IV

The new manual spoke of ODD as having a "pattern of relativistic, hostile, and defiant behavior".

What they meant was

- relativistic from YOUR perspective, not the child's

- hostile towards YOU

- defiant about YOUR authority

in much the same way as a sexist husband might write about his "uncooperative and oppositional wife" as a sign of mental disturbance in her.  A sexist husband who refuses to consider you are - your own gender, you are , you are dealing with his twisted nature (sexist).  Autistics also are other, have their own way, their own needs, and are equal - if these differences went away magically, we'd no longer be autistic.

Besides, autism is not composed of a handful of "behaviours", we are people, autistics, a natural valid needed human variation that can thankfully be handed down.

----- 2013 DSM 5

The DSM 5 made matters worse and stupidly shifted the emphasis to a "persistent pattern of angry and irritable mood along with vindictive behavior", and it is still just as possible for us all to consider how many husbands (for example) have come to see their wives as just , when in fact, objectively, the problem lay solely with the husband being seized of, and held captive by, their selfish perspective and the loss of vision that level of gas lighting causes.

In the USA, racial bias makes the the rate at which ODD is diagnosed much worse for Black Americans and Hispanic/LatinX autistics.

In cases where a parent accepts the ODD diagnosis, nothing short of a complete change of parenting style is required to turn this around - such as advocated here in Autism Inclusivity and by all leading PDA specialists and commentators.

----- 2018-2024 Modern Days

The

- EDA-8 Eight Question Questionnaire and the adults version

- EDA-QA

are used to highlight PDA in individuals. Better tools will come.  

So many of those wrongly diagnosed with ODD, score highly on these tests, and so great is the positive developing response of individuals to PDA strategies, that PDD no should exist, having been a massive mistake manufactured in days of extreme normalization/conformity, need for social adhesion as a response to a series of world wars that threatened society through various nations no longer sharing a common humanity with the free world, so many nations heading for the inhuman twin tyrannies of jackboot fascism and tanky communism instead.

----- PDA Preferences

Finally, autistics are beginning to name and describe PDA from their very own expert perspective.  Examples of this include new acronymic meanings or names such as:

PDA Pervasive Drive for Autonomy

~ Devon Price (Laziness does not exist)

RDA Rational Demand Avoidance 

~ Assoc Prof Dr Damian Milton (Double empathy Problem)

RANDOM Rational and Necessary Demand Organization Mechanism

~ Knr Lamp hard (ASNZ & Coterie/Kotiri Co-founder) 

DDV Demand Deprecation Vacuum 

~ Gen Âû (End Neurophobia Co-founder)

Whether you believe PDA is nature’s answer to over-conformity or a singular coping mechanism or the result of trauma, it is wrong to call it a defect, to pathologize what is either natural or necessary. PDA, properly understood, is an extremely powerful assist for those who experience misplaced or nasty expectational crushing.

----- Fall of the DSM

In 2013, shortly before the publication of DSM-5, the director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), Thomas R. Insel, declared that the agency would no longer fund research projects that relied exclusively on DSM diagnostic criteria, due to its. 

Superficiality, lack of proof, repeatability, and grabs for insurance funding are often cited by major funders and scientific organisations like the British Psychological Association as reasons to damn the DSM.  Capitalism, humans as working fodder, has more to do with the DSM's ideology, than actual living functioning science and good healthy living. 70% of 'scientists' developing the DSM 5 have fiscal links to the pharmaceutical industry - while none of those developing PDA, as an example, have such links.  A serious conflict of interest that grows for the DSM's owner and profit-make, the APA's shareholders, most of whom are pharmaceutical companies and owners of such.

This cannot be fixed by tweaks in the DSM 5.1, or 6 or 7.  The DSM's foundation has proved to be ... sand ... falsity, supposition, greed.  

All the gains for avoidant autistics have been made by reference to PDA, not ODD.

----- PDA Supports

Kristy Forbes

https://www.facebook.com/inTunePathways/

Parenting

https://neurodivergentinsights.com/blog/low-demand-parenting

https://www.instagram.com/pdaparenting

https://www.autisticrealms.com/post/low-demand-parenting-not-just-for-children

Support

https://www.facebook.com/groups/pdasupport/

Adults

https://www.facebook.com/groups/AdultPDASupportNetwork/