Doctors are ‘failing to spot Asperger’s in girls’
Expert says many more girls have autism than was thought, and failure to diagnose them can lead to misery
So, basically, what this article is saying is they discovered the way that boys present with autism, went “well that covers 100% of the population surely!” and then didn’t bother figuring out how autism presents in girls.
Girls slip through the diagnostic net, said Attwood, because they are so good at camouflaging or masking their symptoms. “Boys tend to externalise their problems, while girls learn that, if they’re good, their differences will not be noticed,” he said. “Boys go into attack mode when frustrated, while girls suffer in silence and become passive-aggressive. Girls learn to appease and apologise. They learn to observe people from a distance and imitate them. It is only if you look closely and ask the right questions, you see the terror in their eyes and see that their reactions are a learnt script.”
WOW.
Tony Attwood, founder of the first diagnostic and treatment clinic for children and adults with Asperger’s, and author of The Complete Guide to Asperger’s Syndrome, agreed with Gould’s estimation of a 2.5:1 ratio of boys to girls. “The bottom line is that we understand far too little about girls with ASDs because we diagnose autism based on a male conceptualisation of the condition. We need a complete paradigm shift,” he said.
WE FIGURED OUT HOW TO DIAGNOSE BOYS AND BECAUSE WE FIGURED THAT WOULD WORK FOR EVERYONE BECAUSE BOYS AND GIRLS ARE SO EXACTLY THE SAME (child psychology would DISAGREE WITH YOU IDIOTS) NOW WE’RE REAL SURPRISED THAT WE FUCKED UP.
This. This is a feminist issue. This is an issue like holy shit there are doctors out there who will deny a female patient who is referred to them because ‘lul girls don’t get austism’. They didn’t think to do any more research because, whatever right? We figured out how to solve the male side of the problem.
This is so wrong on so many levels.
relatedly, tony attwood is kind of a dick
And it’s not just an issue of “how it presents” in boys vs girls.
Think about it:
A boy is quiet, unsociable, and fixated on a topic that interests him but might be considered unusual. He walks on his toes. He refuses to eat anything but Kix cereal and saltines. He can’t keep a grip on the monkeybars on the playground. Parents will notice. He isn’t “behaving right”, boys are supposed to be outgoing, right? Loud and rambunctious? Interested in everything around them? Eat any food put in front of them? Athletic and strong?
Now think of a girl in the same situation. She walks on her toes- how cute she must be imitating mommy’s high heels, or the ballerina in her favorite movie she watches all day every day without end. She’s quiet. “Wow, so fortunate your little girl is so well behaved, not a brat like my daughter!” She refuses to eat anything but Kix cereal and saltines? She’s just being fussy. Girls are always fussy, didn’t you know? She can’t do math? It’s okay. Girls are bad at math. Right? She can’t keep a grip on the monkeybars but obviously it’s just because girls aren’t good at sports.
My point being, parents not noticing a girl’s Autism is deeply rooted in sexism. And it’s bullshit. Even today my mom acts like there’s “no way” I could be autistic even though my brother (diagnosed at 9yrs when I was 5) and I presented THE EXACT SAME SYMPTOMS!!! FOR OUR ENTIRE CHILDHOOD!!! AND WE STILL DO!!!! My brother got every bit of aid available at the time, IEPs in school, special arrangements at home for his sensory difficulties. You know what I got? I got told to stop being a picky little bitch. To suck it up. Because I’m a girl.
Reblogging again for the important commentary.
@penicillium-pusher
I think this may interest youI still don’t know whether or not I might be on the Autism spectrum, but I will say this. I once came across a still developing female-specific autism diagnostic template, and was amazed at some of the VERY specific criteria that matched up my history and personality quirks. Things like talking too loud without realizing that you are. This is a thing that used to be a running joke about me in my small circle of friends. Also, anxiety specifically about doing bureaucratic paperwork. I have this to an extraordinary degree and it’s actually ended up costing me significant amounts of money over my life, because often times its so intense that I will miss deadlines to fill out DMV paperwork or insurance paperwork and will end up getting fined for it. Being overly emotionally empathetic, and not being able to deal with things like second-hand embarrassment or graphic depictions of suffering. I literally cannot watch things like shows with awkward-situation humor, or those sad animal ASPCA commercials. I also cry way more than is typical at sad books, movies, TV shows, etc. I do the repetitive self-calming behaviors (can’t remember the name at the moment), usually the leg-bounce. I normally hate being hugged or people touching me casually. I often have a hard time discerning when someone is flirting with me for real, or is romantically interested in me. Also, two of the most common professions for women with Aspergers are actress/singer/performer and academic/college professor – the only two career paths I’ve ever seriously considered. Even my long history of fandom involvement is very stereotypical of particularly women/girls with Aspergers as they tend to fixate on celebrities, pop culture and fictional narratives and characters.
That doesn’t necessarily mean everyone in fandom is on the Autism spectrum obviously. (But fandom probably does have a larger than normal amount of people on the autism spectrum, particularly women) And even if I am on the Austism spectrum, for the most part it hasn’t interfered with my life to the point that I NEED formal diagnosis or intervention. But I will also say that one of the things I learned in researching this is that women with lower-scale autism often tend to get misdiagnosed with depression, or things like bipolar disorder, because often they try to manage their lives ‘normally’ and get tapped out because they still experience much higher levels of social exhaustion, and stress in response to the general business of life that they aren’t properly compensating for. They often feel drained, unable to get basic life tasks done, and this can present like depression or bipolar disorder, but standard medications and therapy for depression don’t help because that’s not what’s actually wrong. So if you are a woman who struggles with these things, you may want to investigate this further, because these female-specific profiles are very new and still not common knowledge amongst average psychologists and psychiatrists and doctors who aren’t autism specialists. (Even plenty of autism specialists still are behind on all of this)