Age of diagnosis link to severity?

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In light of british actress stephanie davies coming out as hfa at a late age.

Just wondered is there a link between severity and age of diagnosis?

I mean if you can go up to your 40's without anyone mentioning autism then surely the symptoms must be mild in comparison to a 2-3 year old that is suspected of being autistic?

Is there truth to this or is it really no one was spotting the signs decades ago?

Of course there is the link: if a child has seizures and can't learn speech, they get diagnosed early. If someone is mainly socially awkward, they can live a whole life before attracting enough attention for a diagnosis, especially when they can employ masking strategies.

The former is correct in most cases.

The latter being that earlier on if the signs were spotted they were often misunderstood.

Indeed. The less intuitive ability there is the sooner the demands on the person in that area exceed their ability to cope and things are noticed.

Given time, we also find ways to do those things as a learned skill or with some extra supporting techniques which others do intuitively.

If I was assessed in my twenties the traits and negative effects on me would have been obvious, perhaps my employer would have come in for praise for their tolerance and refraining from "Managing me out". At 53 on the other hand my assessor's report notes I had made good use of the strong parts of my autistic profile,and recognised that as an achievement on my part.

I think it depends on the situation . For example I have a history of severe mental illness, and have been a psychiatric service user since just before I was 17.


Due to my last mental health trust seeing everything through the lens of that severe mental illness mentions by me that there was more going on than SMI were ignored.

I come under a more enlightened and less intellectually myopic pdoc when I move here and within 7 months of my first appointment with him I have an Asperger's dx.

As I am the same person here as I was there it all comes down to the quality of the pdocs etc seeing me.

Ha! I'm Asperger's and yet I got my diagnosis when I was 8. And I'm a FEMALE!! !

I've always been angry about receiving a diagnosis in childhood because it makes me feel more severe than what I am.

I didn't have any delays when I was a baby; no speech delays or anything. And I was a very chatty, sociable child. But I had poor behaviour issues and difficulties controlling my emotions, so I was prone to temper tantrums, whinging a lot and crying. I was very hyperactive too. But because I had social anxiety in the classroom, they didn't diagnose me with ADHD because back then everyone thought ADHD meant being loud and obnoxious in the classroom (which is just a stereotype). But my behaviour at home (and social awkwardness at school) was what put me in the Asperger's spotlight.

I wish I wasn't such a brat when I was a child, then I would have been diagnosed in adulthood like everybody else.

When I was young being a bolshy/sulky brat(I was more one than my brother or sister) wasn't a criteria for being diagnosed with anything .

I had no speech till age 5 and severe behavioral problems which went well beyond brattiness.

Some sort of diagnosis for me at the first glance of a psychologist was inevitable.

in the future that will evolve into being more true. Greater severity of autism correlating with earlier diagnosis. But today..no. The two things do NOT correlate.

Yes..the more far out from the norm you are- then the earlier in life it is that you are likely to be sent to shrinks.

But you have to remember that the autism spectrum didn't get expanded to include most of the folks who today could be diagnosed as being on the spectrum until 1994. So there are generations of folks (including moi) who are today classifiable as HFA or aspie, who wouldn't have been so diagnosed in the pre 1994 days of our childhoods.

My parents sent me to a bunch of shrinks from like nine years old onward into adulthood. NONE of them ever gave me any kind of label, and none suggested I was autistic or aspie. Even the lady I went to in the early 2000s never used the words autism nor aspergers in connection with me until my mom sis and I suggested to her that I might have aspergers. She responded to the suggestion by saying that she "never heard of aspergers before"! So she read up about it that night (this was ten years AFTER aspergers was put in the DSM), and then ...decided that she agreed with us that I had it!

A few years later I went and got the actual battery of tests and got officially dxd with it.

The point being that I was already deviant enough to be sent to shrinks when I was in my childhood, but it was too early in the history of society for me to be diagnosed with aspergers/autism because the diagnosis wouldn't exist for decades to come.

I was diagnosed very young—but I’m not really severely affected.

Thus, I go against the apparent correlation.

Last edited by kraftiekortie on 20 Nov 2019, 10:35 am, edited 2 times in total.

^^ A good post. Well explained .

He meant Naturalplastic’s post.

Hence the ^^

I'm so autistic I was diagnosed in utero.

I know a person who was diagnosed before their mother was pregnant

Were you really diagnosed "in utero," Ezra?

Very few autistic people are diagnosed "in utero."

Which makes me think you have a comorbid--just one more thing to overcome.