Profound Concerns about “Profound Autism”: Dangers of Severity Scales and Functioning Labels for Support Needs

Recently the Lancet published a Commission on future of care and clinical research autism, which included side panel arguing for adoption “profound autism”, term in- tended to describe autistic people who require constant supervision or care, thought usually have significant intellectual disability, limited no language, an inability advocate themselves. This state-of-the-art review deconstructs problems with autism sublabels such as autism” low- high-functioning labels. It then examines communicative cognitive capacities minimally speaking people, finding that individuals can communicate (especially responsive partners) need nonverbal testing allows them demonstrate their potential strengths. concludes ability self-advocate, influences other both support frustrate communication.