An Opinion Piece
I’m an autism mom, author, speaker, and chiropractor with a nonpharmacological autism practice. Over more than two decades of working with patients and families, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in healthcare for autistic children and adults, and for society in general as well.
Too often, the conventional medical approach treats symptoms like pieces in a matching game: behavior appears, a prescription is matched to it, and the underlying cause is left unexplored.
Let me illustrate this concept with a short quiz: You’re on a trail ride and your horse becomes irritable and begins to act out aggressively. Do you:
- Give it an antipsychotic approved for irritability in horses and get on with the trail ride
-or-
- Stop the ride and check the horse for areas of pain or discomfort
Option A is obviously ridiculous. Any reasonable rider would dismount and begin looking for the problem. You’d check the hooves, the bit, the saddle. You might listen to the horse’s belly or look for a sore spot. In other words, you’d assume the behavior meant something—and you’d go searching for the cause.
Sadly, even this basic level of examination isn’t usually offered to autistic patients. At the first hint of irritability, aggression, or disrupted sleep patterns, all common scenarios in ASD, medications are offered to reduce these symptoms without asking why they appeared.
To be fair, this isn’t simply a matter of uncaring doctors. Many physicians entered medicine because they genuinely want to help people. But they are practicing inside a system that increasingly makes careful investigation difficult.
Most primary care appointments today are scheduled in short blocks—sometimes as little as fifteen minutes. Physicians may be expected to see a certain number of patients per hour or per day in order to meet productivity targets set by clinics, hospital systems, or insurance reimbursement models. Their performance is often measured by these numbers.
Within that framework, medical detective work becomes extremely difficult.
Uncovering the cause of an autistic child’s (or teen’s or adult’s) irritability or sleep disruption might require asking detailed questions about diet, digestion, infections, sleep habits, environmental stressors, or recent changes in routine. It may require coordinating with other specialists, reviewing past records, or ordering additional testing. These conversations take time—time that physicians often simply do not have.
When time is scarce, efficiency becomes the priority. And in modern medicine, the most efficient response to a symptom is often a prescription.
A medication can be written in seconds. It offers a quick, concrete response to the problem presented in the exam room. It reassures families that something is being done. It fits neatly into a fifteen-minute appointment.
But medications frequently manage symptoms rather than eliminate the underlying problem.
If irritability appears, there is a medication for irritability. If sleep is disrupted, there is a medication for sleep. If anxiety surfaces, there is a medication for anxiety. Over time, additional medications may be added to manage new symptoms—or even the side effects of earlier prescriptions.
For many patients, especially those on the autism spectrum, the deeper question—why did this symptom appear in the first place?—may never be fully explored.
Autistic individuals often experience medical conditions that can masquerade as behavioral problems: gastrointestinal pain, food sensitivities, sleep disorders, headaches, chronic infections, immune challenges, and sensory overload, among others. Many autistic people also have difficulty communicating pain in conventional ways. What looks like aggression or irritability may actually be the only way a child can express that something hurts. Uncovering that message requires patience, curiosity, and time.
This is why it may seem like I’m shamelessly directing readers to my first book, the multiple gold-award-winning one, The Un-Prescription for Autism. What I really want is for you to work through the protocols I share in the book and address the underlying medical issues that often accompany autism and can strongly affect your ability—or motivation—to drive, rather than relying solely on prescriptions that simply manage or suppress the symptoms you’re experiencing.
And I’m not against medications─I often point out that I didn’t write The Anti-Prescription. Medication absolutely has an important role. In cases of severe self-injurious behavior or extreme aggression, it can be essential. People on the autism spectrum also experience higher rates of seizures, anxiety, depression, and infections, and appropriate medical treatment for those conditions is critical.
But autistic children and adults need more than a quick prescription matched to a symptom. They deserve careful evaluation and thoughtful support for the many challenges they face.
I saw this “matching game” when my own children were young, and I see it playing out across healthcare in general.
Friends tell me they take medications to manage conditions related to lifestyle habits—without ever being encouraged to change diet, sleep, or exercise patterns. Television commercials urge us to “ask your doctor” about specific drugs if we have certain symptoms. We even joke about the long lists of alarming side effects those ads mention—everything from four-hour erections to death.
The message is clear: whatever the problem, there’s a pill to improve the numbers on a lab test or make us feel better.
But are we actually healthier?
It sometimes feels as though we have a medication for everything—and a cure for very little.
I saw the consequences of this firsthand while accompanying my aging mother to healthcare visits in her declining years. I noticed that for every symptom she mentioned, a prescription was offered in return. Multiple doctors were prescribing in isolation within different specialties, but no one was coordinating her overall medication burden. Her collection of nearly thirty prescriptions required a small suitcase by her bed. I made an appointment with the pharmacist to go over her list, and was horrified to learn that many of the medications either should not be taken together, or with some of her other health conditions.
This is the hidden cost of the matching game.
When we suppress symptoms without addressing the causes, the underlying problems continue to simmer. Over time this can lead to worsening health, missed days at school or work, restricted activity, and the growing burden of polypharmacy—taking multiple medications simply to manage symptoms.
The financial cost is enormous as well. One study estimates the lifetime cost of supporting a person with autism at between $1.4 and $2.4 million. Meanwhile, across society, chronic illness is rising and healthcare systems are increasingly strained.
People may be living longer, but many are not living healthier.
It takes detective work to uncover and appropriately support the medical problems that masquerade under various symptoms, but it can lead to more vibrant health and less dependence upon medication in both the autistic and the general population.
It’s time to reconsider the “matching game” that has blossomed on the healthcare scene, and get back to old-fashioned listening and detective work in the doctor’s office. The best questions start with WHY.
Join me next time as we explore the misunderstood vision problems on the autism spectrum, and why they might make you hesitant to drive without really understanding why.