After a year of searching for a competent, available and affordable psychologist, I finally found one and got a diagnosis of autism in 2021. These psychologists had little experience diagnosing girls as well. Most places I called were clueless when it came to diagnosing adult women. It took me a year to find a psychologist who offered testing for adults, who had an understanding of women with autism, and who wouldn’t charge me $5,000 or more for an assessment, since my insurance wouldn’t cover the testing. It wasn ’t until 2020, when I was in my 30s and researching autism for my son, that I began to suspect I was on the spectrum.
I was undoubtedly different, but because my traits were more subtle than what we typically consider a person with autism to have, and because I had become accustomed to masking these quirks (girls with autism and ADHD are masterful at doing this), no one suspected I was on the spectrum. We are starting to discover that these traits are more likely to occur in women and girls with autism.
I was extremely literal, and had a fascination with math and numbers, as is common in autism.īut, less commonly, I didn ’t like to be touched, I laughed at inappropriate times, ate the same foods every day, and was frequently overstimulated by smells, textures and sounds. Sure, I operated on a different wavelength: I gravitated towards philosophy and books that dissected the meaning of life. Growing up in the 1990s, I was different from other girls, but I certainly never considered I had autism. This means when women and girls visit their doctors with symptoms that lead them to think they have autism, they don’t fit the diagnostic criteria, leading to no diagnosis or an incorrect one.ĭeveloping a more accurate diagnostic test is an issue of safety, as well as quality of life, for so many women silently struggling to understand why they might be different, including myself. The DSM doesn’t distinguish between subtypes of autism, including Asperger’s syndrome. These diagnostic requirements are outdated and more specific to the white male experience of autism, and until recently, most psychological testing done to diagnose autism was developed using the experiences and symptoms of cisgender white males. This version has extremely restrictive requirements for an autism diagnosis, such as showing deficits in nonverbal communication, displaying social issues, using repetitive speech, and difficulty maintaining relationships.
#Autism spectrum test manual#
The latest diagnostic criteria for autism were set forth in the 2013 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders ( DSM-5). The current assessment is a prime example of gender bias in medicine and an example of how diagnostics are rife with gender and racial biases. This test and these criteria need to be co-created by autistic women and psychologists who understand how autism manifests differently in women and girls. The challenges I have had in getting my diagnosis lead me to believe that we have to develop a more accurate standard autism test and better diagnostic criteria specifically for women and girls. I am a professor, a screenwriter, producer, mother and a woman who has autism. The problem is that people, especially medical professionals, don ’t know what to look for when it comes to identifying and diagnosing autism in women and girls. This is what people say when I first tell them I ’m on the spectrum.
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