Thoughs about Asperger´s syndrome in today´s society.

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Are girls underdiagnosed?
If yes, then that would surely have a big effect on the decision criteria in general?
What do you think about that?
Also there seems to be some PC going around when speaking about those things, although it varies
a lot between countries.

Also, how can a diagnosis ever be even close to accurate? Especially when the criteria is practised differently between countries, and changes over time.

Also, is society´s tolerance to "asperger" behaviour (difficult to define) increasing or decreasing?
-my answer to that is the tolerance to accepct the "condition" is increasing, but at the same time society wants more conformity. Little bit paradoxical.

Thanks for listening,

Yes, it definitely seems that way.

The diagnostic criteria are mainly based on male presentations, although this is starting to change, but it's a slow process.

I think the concept of what's PC varies widely between different people.

As above, the subject is very far from being fully understood, therefore criteria will change through time. Agreed, one issue is cultural differences, for example in France where Autistics are still considered to be ret*ds. In the UK, variation is still seen not only between different administrative areas, but on the differing opinions of the persons providing the assessments.

I think we are back to what is considered to be PC, people generally accept the condition better now but do not actually receive information or make much effort to understand the issue at a deeper level. It is mostly superficial.

You're welcome!

Yes, there is a “female” presentation, borne out of compensation and adaptation. And there is under-diagnosis

But there are many women who exhibit the “classic” signs of both Classic Autism and Aspergers.

the way I see it is this:
Society should give tolerance and compassion toward people even if they don't understand the "why's".
The "why's" are always gonna be different, and there's 1000's different things that could be wrong with a person, aside from Asperger's, maybe they had a bad day or something else is wrong which is beyond our ability to 'diagnose'... Maybe it's the whole system is f-ed, making robots out of people (please tell me that you atleast agree this much)..

And since people's mental capacity to understand things is also limited, I think best way is therefore just to be careful when approaching everyone, and be kind to one another regardless of whether we understand or not... But it's challenging, I know that too... It's not easy for them, it's not easy for us, I think at least we should try.

Last edited by F84.9 on 21 May 2018, 8:29 am, edited 1 time in total.

It is true that boys far outnumber girls in diagnosis of ASD, from 1 in4 for classic Autism and to more than 1 in 10 for high functioning ASD (Baron-Cohen, et) but they are unclear as to why. One theory, and it is picking up steam, is that there is a biological difference in brain chemistry between males and felmaleals and that tends to also skew the ASD results. Another is that exhibit more extremes ( outliers) both positive and negative (geniuses and evil). And another still is girls have better coping skills and tend to 'hide' and symptoms better, better social skills. Another is that ASD effects girla differently and that they assess the wrong things foe girls.
The PC culture would it a travesty that girls are underrepresented in fact they point to the inherent 'male' dominance in the culture
This means that girls are being underserved if indeed girls should represent a higher proportion than it does.but right now there is no way of knowing.

Based on the clientele on WP, I would say the incidence of, at least, HFA of the Asperger’s type to be rather close to 1:1.

10:1 is a pointedly absurd figure.

Yes, I think that's a very good point, John. Although my autism was undiagnosed for most of my life, I certainly feel that there are many ways in which society is now less "autism-friendly" than in my youth, and that greater tolerance for divergent behaviour matters just as much as interventions related to any particular diagnosis. Of course, my view is coloured by being "level 1", and thus expected able to sustain a modest degree of independence; folks who require more intensive support might perceive the situation rather differently.

Aside from the trend to social conformity that you mention, there are many practical ways in which I find the world harder to deal with that have come about due to social and economic changes. A few that come to mind are (as a middle-aged UK resident)...

- Massive rise in the expectation of car ownership, and reduced availability and higher relative cost of public transport.
- The far greater number of cars makes the streets harder to navigate safely and more overwhelming to the senses.
- Small, quiet local shops being replaced by enormous super-markets with too much noise, people traffic and unnecessary choice.
- The employment market shifting away from manufacturing to customer service jobs.
- The rise of "soft skills" in employment ("good team worker"/"able to multi-task"), even when not relevant to the work at hand.
- The rise in agency work and short-term employment contracts requires a kind of adaptability that we might find difficult.
- Insistence on using the telephone or internet by organisations which used to be accessible in person or by post.
- Massive increase in exposure to advertising - they sell social stereotypes just as effectively as they sell products, IMHO.
- The rise of mobile phones and social media adding to social pressures and the expectation of a speedy response at all times.

I have no doubt that autistic people are not the only ones who find life more difficult for some of those reasons - they will catch up with many people eventually simply due to the effects of ageing. Campaigns for tolerance and respect for disabled people need to raise these kinds of issues much more; increasing the tolerance of certain receptive people on a personal level does nothing to address these systemic issues, especially if the tolerance is only derived from pity or virtue signalling.

Im a girl that has been late diagnosed at the age of 32 but also just because i was lucky to run into the right therapist. She said at the first setting im 100% aspergers. None of all the diagnose they ever gave me could be helped nor matched my behaviour.

Perhaps woman pass trough easly, troughout my life i did learn to interact decently with social activities etc yet many things seem more dominant at a later age. Ive been grown with my habits and considered these as normal, whilst it is clearly restricted to repetance and a small wondow to the wide range of things people do or adapt in their life.

My country is rater a conservative working society. You are measured by your work by all that you ever did at the past regard studying etc. Little understanding of things that are out of their perspective.

Thats where all my anger and frustration comes from the late diagnosis. Im just 33 years old but know my life regards society is already past. I never had the chance to study something i like nor did i learn any profession. At the other hand there are many restrictions with money towards study to besides your dagree youve got at school. You are out, at that age is not even a chance to get in.

I do have disability fee and work on free will at a place where people do have disabilitys. Society sees you as an outlaw - it sounds better then ret*d.

http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/ar ... io.1001081

Follow the link and downooad the abstract.
1:1?

Read the report. Semantics, you are still wrong

Interesting points there. I think many of the new ways of dealing with employment and so on, is at the cost of common sense. Generally speaking I think Aspies have more of a common sense, but of course that varies. Complicated stuff..

This is the PC culture that we can´t allow to poison kids and society.

Its obvious that there is a great difference between boys and girls. The difference between the outliers in boys and typical girls is huge! The school system and intertwined servives are a bit too immature to recognize that.

Here in Iceland 22-23% of boys are on some kind of drug related to the brain. Mostly because of autism, adhd, and anxiety.
The ratio for girls is around 5-6%.
You would think that the media and "the experts" would look into this, on the grounds that the school is doing things very badly for boys. Ohhh noo,, girls underrepresented, male bias, etc etc.
Crasy world we live in..

And yet maybe the report is wrong. The main question in this thread was that girls and other minority groups may be under diagnosed. How can the report represent an accurate figure if this is the case?

I think this debate between you highlights something I found when I was first diagnosed about a year ago, the difficulty of getting accurate statistics for Asperger's, particularly female Asperger's. I worked myself out as 1 in 10,000 of the UK population, which I now believe, based on interaction here and at job centre autism group, is bollocks. I don't feel that rare on WP either as an Aspie or as a female, but that's not really a very scientific study. We need more facts.

Being more than 50 percent of the population does not make you a minority

Since there is an acute awareness of how underdiagnosed women are, I would be interested to know the results of similar studies five years from now.

One thing to consider: the incidence of autism itself, before the DSM-IV, about 1990, was over 1,000 - 1. Now it is about 59 - 1. By and large, this was caused by a broadening of the diagnostic criteria, and more awareness of the subtlety of the Spectrum.

The female rate presently is about the same as the overall rate in about 2005. It is 157 to 1 presently.

No, women are not a minority---obviously. In the vast majority of instances, the male-female or female-male ratio is less than 1.1 to 1.

There are some states in the US which have slightly more females than males. In other states, the reverse is true.