That's sad, but it surely must be an extremely uncommon problem.

It sounds like Aaronson had an uncommonly severe version, but the general form of the problem doesn't seem exceptionally rare, among the subpopulation in question.

Figuring out what we can usefully do about it, without trading one problem for another, that's the hard part.

(Part of me also wants to point out that exactly how uncommon it is doesn't matter very much, due to a perhaps irrational fear that someone wants to say "well, it's not common" and then forget the problem exists.)