Women and late diagnosis article from BBC

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Some fairly positive coverage on female autism on the BBC this morning.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt ... sis_autism

Good stuff. Interesting that before diagnosis one of them thought she couldn't be autistic because she had empathy. It's a shame they didn't follow through and categorically say why that's a common, dangerous mistake.

Yes, it is a shame that these articles don't do some myth busting with regard to female autism. I don't know how many times health professionals didn't take the idea that my daughter had autism seriously because of her capacity to mask and her social skills or her empathy.

The struggle is real. My own mother did everything within her power to help me with my problems when I was younger. We saw countless mental health professionals and psychologists. Autism was never mentioned, until my aunt contacted my parents saying she'd watched a program about Aspergers and seen similarities in me. Ridiculous how overlooked women on the spectrum are.

Most of the women were older so it doesn't surprise me they were not diagnosed. I would be interested to know at what point did diagnosis become common.

That's a great article. I've read all the profiles and I like what I see.

I could have written some of these myself - especially the one about feeling that everyone else being given an instruction manual on how to deal with people.

I’m not formally diagnosed but it explains my whole life. Before about 6 months ago I’d always discounted autism as I was looking at the male autistic signs and it didn’t really fit. I’m also “high functioning” - have a job, a house and husband. I was trying to find out why I’m “broken” - just not understanding how people work, always trying to study people, copying how they act and feel like I’m always acting to try and blend in -wondered at one point whether I was a sociopath but that didn’t fit either because I’ve got way too much empathy.

I’m not just trying to jump on some kind of bandwagon either by self diagnosing either. After telling my husband I thought I had Asperger’s he spent days researching female autism and said ‘this is you’ - we’ve been together 26 years since we were 18 (I got lucky there) so he knows me better than anyone.

But now he understands why I say the things I do and act the way I do, why my executive function is haywire, why things freak me out. Why change is so hard for me. Why I shut down in confrontations. Why I am blunt to the point of rudeness without realising. Why I’m weird in summary

I was born in the 70’s so my childhood was typical British 70’/80’s parenting of fed✔️Clothes ✔️Nothing bleeding or broken✔️My parents just left me to it which actually suited me very well- none of today’s ‘helicopter’ parenting so I don’t think they saw that much of my weird behaviour. Plus it’s really obvious to me now that my dad is on the spectrum. I’ve spent a lot of time recently replaying my childhood and adult life and so much now makes sense.

But I don’t know if a formal diagnosis is worth it - getting an appointment with my gp is nearly impossible and I think I mask too well to be taken seriously

If you have AS/HFA and were diagnosed in the 70s or 80s it probably wouldn't have done you much good. People still hadn't the slightest clue how to deal with children with AS/HFA and there were no resources tailored for children on the verbal end of the spectrum.

It may have even caused you some harm.

That made me laugh, same here

I'm the polar opposite of the women in the article--unsuccessful in every area of life, and with a very pronounced form of the condition that makes it impossible to mask. I could never in a million years pass for neurotypical. Yet, even I didn't get a diagnosis until my late teens. Autism wasn't even mentioned to me until several years before that, and my mother had to fight tooth and claw to get me diagnosed. If someone as blatantly autistic as me had trouble, I can see why other (young) women go undiagnosed.

I identify with a lot of these women. I considered helping children with autism, because I think I could identify with a lot of their struggles. I was also the girl who got good grades, but struggled with anxiety and had few friends.