Male/Female Aspie Ratio Misjudged?

Post Reply New Topic

I thought that classical, severe, stereotypical autism is much more commonly seen in boys. Since as previously stated I do not think there is a gender disparity in ASDs this either means that (a) lots of girls with autism are getting misdiagnosed as mentally ret*d, etc. or (b) females with autism tend to be higher-functioning. Both are probably true but I think the latter more so.

I like myself much better when my ADHD (whether it is "really" ADHD or a part of my autism) is medicated than I do when it is not. I function a lot better, and I think you'll find that a lot of people who have ADHD feel the same way about medication - that it's often a lifesaver and helps turn things around in a lot of ways. ADHD is often much more impairing than people realize. Manythink it's about "not paying attention" but it impacts every part of one's life in negative ways. Per Dr. Russell Barkley, one of the foremost experts on ADHD, says it is more impairing than most other outpatient conditions, such as depression or anxiety.

That is, incidentally, an average. Some may find their depression is worse than their own or someone else's ADHD. But typically, the range of ADHD is more impairing than the range of depression or anxiety.

Anyway, what I said was that 60-70% of autistic people meet the criteria for ADHD - I want to be clear that this is not precisely the same as saying "60-70% of autistic people have ADHD" although I would argue that a difference that is no difference make no difference - for all intents and purposes, we have ADHD. For many of these people (take Pensieve and myself, but there are others on this forum), medications that work on ADHD (like stimulants) work on us.



I found research to this effect earlier this year. I will see if I can find it again.

I don't think that females with autism necessarily tend to be higher-functioning, but I'll have to find the aforementioned research.

I think a lot of sweeping statements are getting made in this thread based on assumption more than evidence. I'm doing this too right now because I can't find many of the links I referred to, so I'm not really calling anyone out. Just frustrated.

--- Cant say, never met a girl with aspergers, maybe I'd actually feel happy once in a while,,, good to know there are some, just never met one.

Gee I hope you are wrong, Im enough of a minority as it is, an aspie girl may be my only hope

These are "sweeping statements" because they are based on personal observation and opinion more than anything else. Not a lot of formal research has been done into much of what we are discussing yet. AS as a bonafide diagnosis has only been around since 1994, not even 20 years, and there is therefore a much smaller body of work on it than most other neurological conditions. Awareness of the distinctness of female autism by and large is limited to the past five years.

I just noticed I'm an Emu Egg.... that explains it then..... (re: avatar)

Lorna Wing first published her paper on Asperger's Syndrome in the late 70s or early 80s, and a lot of research was done during the 1980s which is why AS ended up in the DSM-IV in the first place. And of course research on autism goes back to the 1940s. Since AS is autism, there's actually a lot of research. Unfortunately, a lot of it excludes people who would these days be diagnosed as AS even though Kanner's original research actually included children who today would be diagnosed as such.

Autistic women are extremely underresearched, and it seems that many of the big researchers look for boys by preference, and there's probably only a fraction of the research done with adults as is done with children. And much of it is plainly ridiculous - for example, taking brain scans of autistic people while they do a particular activity and come to conclusions strictly based on the brain scans and not even asking the autistics for their perspective. This is how some researchers concluded, for example, that autistic people probably do not daydream.

Other research seems to beg the question almost - for example, when autistic people are able to pass theory of mind tests, they keep making increasingly complicated tests until they get a higher failure rate again.

I used to get called a 'snob' at school, when I was anything but. I was shy and was frightened of some of the kids (with good cause), but I didn't think I was better than them. I think there are a lot of women/girls especially who are misjudged in this way. I may even have done this myself, but I don't remember thinking like that about any men or boys.

The only reason my daughter has been identified so young (6yrs) is because her behaviour problems are so overt. She seldom does a thing she's told and her concentration issues are very noticeable. She's quite ADHD-like or even ODD. The fact that she may have an ASD never even occurred to me until about a year ago. She doesn't have a diagnosis yet, but there's a possibility that she won't even get a definitive diagnosis, just a collection of traits (ADHD/ASD/SPD/giftedness). When people meet her for the first time, they are struck by her tomboyishness (despite being incredibly pretty) and high intelligence, more than anything else. She's an awful lot of work, yet my friend's son (who is nowhere near as stressful to deal with) is being fast-tracked through the assessment process, as he's much more obvious. GRRRR! I'm not that angry really, just frustrated. But it seems inevitable as she's a very high functioning girl.

I don't. I hate the way I feel on almost any type of medication. I don't take pharmaceutical drugs at all unless I am in severe pain.

I took Ritalin for a time when I was 18, just before and after getting diagnosed with ADHD. I will never forget the way it felt when it started working. I was sitting in class and suddenly everything came into focus. Suddenly I could hear and understand what everyone was saying. And it was completely, utterly boring to hear what everyone was saying. I took it off and on for several months and I can't deny it made a huge difference, it made me feel more "normal" but I just hated feeling that way. It felt like it suppressed some vital part of me that I really needed to enjoy life and that was too much of a trade off for me. I tried a couple of other medications later on and hated those too.



Totally agree, it affects every aspect of my life.

I hope I didn't come across as saying everyone benefits from medication. There are so many reasons why it can be good for one person and bad for the next.

Not at all, I was just giving my input on the topic.

Okay, just making sure. I never know. Seriously.

Sounds familiar.

In elementary school, my teachers told my mother I was "arrogant." This was because I rarely, if ever, participated in class or interacted with other children. I was chronically silent, even when someone directly asked me a question. My mother shrugged it off as "shyness," but a child who NEVER speaks is not actually "normal."

I usually didn't speak because 1.) I didn't know I was supposed to be speaking, and 2.) I didn't know what I was supposed to be saying. My early school years were filled with anxiety and terror. And silence.

If males are DXed more than females, my highly unscientific observation is that boys are simply more likely to manifest behavior problems, especially physical aggressiveness. In general, children with behavior issues are going to be evaluated at a much higher rate than "good" children. I've noticed the same thing while looking into Tourette's and dyspraxia: children were more likely to be DXed with these conditions if they "acted out." People with these conditions, but without the behavior issues, tended to fly under the radar as "just weird" until they reached adulthood. I've noticed "good" Aspie boys seem to have the same difficultly getting DXed.

It's almost the same story with ADHD (hyperactive) verses ADHD (inattentive). ADHD-PI is said to occur more frequently in girls, but it hasn't been studied nearly as much as the former on account that ADHD-PI doesn't often come with "bad behavior."

Just sayin'.....

You just described my life! Nice to know there are others out there.
Sometimes I'd just like a little recognition of how hard "normal" life is for me.

However I would like to say that I wouldn't be without my "fighting children", even though I never wanted kids. Life is mayhem sometimes but I choose to see it as living in glorious technicolour!!

That isn't what I meant; for any ASD it is more common for girls to be more impaired than the boys with same disorder.

The issue, then, is either
rampant clinical misdiagnosis based on mannerisms being interpreted differently in males vs females due to cultural gender norms,
or, if not, androcentric issues with the diagnostic criteria themselves,
not an imbalance in the ratio.

Were not the criteria developed studying only male subjects???

Last edited by ValentineWiggin on 06 Dec 2011, 11:35 am, edited 2 times in total.