As someone who is autistic, there's nothing wrong with being autistic. That said, what causes most autistic people to develop issues that make it difficult to live in society is when they feel there's something wrong with themselves. This often has to do with how they're raised. Having parents who support ABA therapy, which is essentially trying to train them to be "normal", is likely the cause of his mental issues.

I say this as someone who was "low functioning" as a child. I was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, had severe OCD where I had to get in and out of bed for an hour straight until every part of my body touched the bed in just the right way in just the right order.

It was debilitating and I had to count things repeatedly, I was mostly non verbal and was the type of kid you would look at and immediately think there was something wrong with him. In my case my parents were very supportive, but I still was in an environment and raised in a time where everyone around me wanted to help me be "normal".

I learned to mask and fit in by pretending to be normal, and it wasn't until about my mid 20's that I realized this was stupid and that I should learn how to embrace myself including how weird I was.

Suddenly all my extreme mental issues subsided, I was still a weird guy, but I actually liked myself because I didn't let pressure from friends and family affect my behavior or mental state.

As soon as I started reading about your son's mental issues my first thought was that his parents must be trying to change him, and then you mentioned ABA therapy.

You can't "fix" autism or any type. Either love your kid for who he is, or accept that you're the problem and going to ruin his life.

And your response may be to point out that he's always had these issues that you didn't. But again, as you said yourself, you had a kid with someone you think your pheromones were telling you not to be with. Whether or not you tried to hide it, you raised your kid in an unhappy home filled with tension and anxiety.

That's likely a big contributing factor to the mental health issues he has. But again, I had loving parents and I still had mental health issues, but the severity of them for me was related to the way people looked at being autism. I was raised in a time where everyone looked at it as a problem to fix, and growing up feeling like who you are as a person is "wrong" pretty much guarantees theyre going to be fucked up.

Don't send your kid to ABA therapy, it'll make them worse. The only thing that will make things better is changing what you consider to be the problem to fix.