Tuesday 2 August 2011
Women and girls on the autism spectrum
This post is a short blog-formerical following the recent National Autistic Society (NAS) conference about women and girls on the autism spectrum. Copies of the various presentations (in PDF format) from the conference can be downloaded for free from the NAS conference site. The presentations cover quite a lot of ground on autism in females and the various debates on potential under-diagnosis.
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Maybe I'm just in denial, but I really don't think so. I happen to have a few of those traits myself, communicating is not my strong point, I'm a lousy flirt, and I enjoy logical stuff more than most of my gender. I don't think I have autism and neither do my good friends, (but they will roll their eyes at my annoying traits which happen to fit the bill). So to some extent it seems like they are reading to much into autism trait thing. On the other hand, my mother is definately one of those missed diagnosis. My grandmother sensed something was wrong and had her seen by a psychiatrist when she was a teenager and they couldn't tell anything. She is social and does make a good friend from time to time but does not keep in touch with them, at all. We always just thought she was wired differently and now we realize it is aspergers. I think early intervention could have been helpful for her so I would love to see more research in this area to help others.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment. It is an area crying out for more research. Whilst not exactly a fan of the universality of psychological 'systemisers vs. empathisers' theory, there is definitely more to look at here alongside societal views of gender differences (girls = dolls and boys = trains). Like you say as long as the aims of research is to help.
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