Talk:Rei Kiriyama/@comment-46094848-20200615080540

As a therapist who works with teenagers who have autism, that bit about Rei having a possible autism spectrum diagnosis needs to be eliminated. You could easily interpret his behavior as pointing to his having ASD. But, you could just as easily interpret his behavior as being caused by social anxiety disorder, or trauma. Seeing characters who have ASD represented as whole people in media is wonderful, and necessary. However, when the central theme of this series is recovering from loss other causes for his depresssion and self-isolation seem more likely.

Speficically his fixation on shogi is cited as support for an ASD diagnosis. However, he doesn't meet this disagnostic criteria for two reasons. First, he says repeatedly that he played shogi to please others, or to escape from trama. Second, even if this could be used to meet the critera, a minimum of two restrictive or repetitive behaviors are needed (along with 4 other critera) to meet a diagnosis for autism. His father's rocking behavior doesn't cut it as evidence.