Atypically Autistic

[Dougella]

This is a talk and a bit of a discussion about the slightly less known presentation of autism, sometimes spoken about as the more 'female' presentation.


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki_YQCDIKfU&t=328s

[limey123]

It seems women are generally better at "masking" than men, which is perhaps one reason why they have been until now less diagnosed.

I have noticed an explosion in the number of women who are getting diagnosed. HFA used to be almost all men, but not anymore. Look on Google, Amazon UK/US or YouTube and you will see a sudden, recent massive growth in resources for females…

[Dougella]

Yes, which is a good thing i would say. The woman who gives this talk has written a number of books about autism, one in particular about women with autism I think. Her name is Sarah Hendricks. (It's not just females ofcourse, it's men too who don't fit the 'classic' autism profile.)

[choirgirl]

That was amazing! Relevant to men too. Thanks for posting.

[Dougella]

You're welcome

[firemonkey]

It might have been good, but too long to wade through .

I do wonder whether being confident enough to become a professional with experience , be it with ASD or SMI, makes you more knowledgable than a person with experience that doesn't have the confidence to do so .

IMO in quite a lot of cases -not at all .

[Dougella]

^ Sorry, it is quite a long talk! She does use slides to condense her points though, so you could skip forward in the video to each slide to just get a bit of an overview.

[firemonkey]

^Not your fault,so need to be sorry . I think I've got a chronic mental stamina deficit . Is there any way to go straight to each slide?

[Dougella]

^ I'm not sure there is I'm afraid. I often don't feel able to wade through long articles or videos either! I just skip to bits that I find relevent or play something in the background while I do other things and tune in more when something particularly catches my attention.

[firemonkey]

Managed to FF to slides and save them . I seem to be a mix of 0 &1 .

[Dougella]

^ Ah good! Yes, the main point she was talking about that people can have a different presentation of autism than was always talked about, they can be more of the 1 or a mixture of 0 and 1 like you say. Which is also a reason that people are being diagnosed later on in life and more females are being diagnosed.

[firemonkey]

The biggest reason for a delay in my case was myopic mental health workers ,at my last trust , seeing all behaviours through the lenses of a psychiatric diagnosis .

[Dougella]

Charlotte Amelia Poe has written a book called "How to Be Autistic". She wasn't diagnosed until she was 21.

"My Autism led me to become a champion of outsiders."

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeands...n-of-outsiders