Judith Gould - Diagnostic differences for women & girls

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But I have to ask who the woman is.

Judith Gould, is the Lead Consultant at the Lorna Wing Centre for Autism and retired as Director of the Centre in 2015. She is a Chartered Consultant Clinical Psychologist, with over 40 years experience, specialising in autism spectrum disorders and learning disabilities.

Before being the Director of The Lorna Wing Centre she worked as a member of the scientific staff of the Medical Research Council Social Psychiatry Unit and was a Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London. She has also worked as a Clinical Psychologist within both health and social services. She has published widely in the field of autism spectrum disorders. Her current interest is the diagnosis of women and girls in the spectrum.

Lorna Wing and Judith Gould’s early work in the 1970s on the epidemiology of autism and related conditions, led to the concept of a spectrum of autistic conditions.

Judith Gould together with Lorna Wing set up The Centre for Social and Communication Disorders, (now the Lorna Wing Centre for Autism) which was the first service in the UK to provide a complete diagnostic, assessment and advice service for children, adolescents and adults with social and communication disorders.

In addition to setting up the Centre as a model for diagnosing autism spectrum disorders the Centre’s team offers training to professionals in their methods of diagnosis and assessment of needs. Lorna Wing and Judith Gould developed an interview schedule called the Diagnostic Interview for Social and Communication Disorders (DISCO) to be used as part of the diagnostic process. This schedule enables the professional to use a dimensional approach when making a diagnosis which is more helpful than diagnostic sub-grouping when planning treatment, education and care. This approach bests fits the new DSM 5 Diagnostic Classification System. The DISCO is widely used throughout the UK and overseas and training in its use is carried out both at the Centre and internationally.

They are often over-eager which can lead to social rejection

Females generally have superior linguistic abilities to males of a smiliar cognitive level

angry/confused when things are not how they are supposed to be according to the learned rules

Slide 22 about fear is something I relate to. I am always stressed. I find it hard to understand what is expected of me and whether what I do is actually good enough at work, in all of the jobs I've had.

One view from a women with Asperger Syndrome
Fear is the core emotional trait, fear triggers unpredictable anxiety
Reason for fear:
•Sustained and untreatable inability to connect, understand and work out situations and people
•The not knowing, the inability to reach for their own feelings or to verbalise things and being unable to understand what is expected of them
•Not being able to work out a sequence of events or to predict people or situations
•The inability to know when they can trust people
•The paralysing fear can fully control them and internally disorganise them to the extent that it becomes easier to disconnect from their surroundings Sofia Lake – ‘A constant feeling of not knowing’ 2014, Author House The Lorna Wing Centre 2016