In China, it is known as a “lonely disease.” The Japanese term is translated as “intentionally closed.” Around the world, people with autism have an awareness of being lonely, socially troublesome and isolated, and seemingly lacking the kind of automatic social instinct that allows for successful interactions, but there is also the desire to achieve it. There is also the perception that people with autism tend to be male.
For decades, researchers, myself included, have considered autism primarily to men. The more I studied boys and men, the more I became clear about the pictures of autism.
Today we realised we were missing out on a huge puzzle all the way through. Not only did we fail to recognize autism in a huge number of women and girls, but it also prevented women from being diagnosed and supported, but we have now made a deep discovery that women’s autistic brains work differently from men’s brains, particularly when it comes to social motivation and behavior. As a result, a whole new picture of a girl’s autism is crystallization, forcing a fundamental rethinking of everything we thought we knew.
Autism is a neurodevelopmental condition commonly diagnosed by the age of five. Current standard diagnostic criteria refer to “the sustained difficulties of social communication and social interaction” and “limited repetitive patterns of behavior, activity, or interest to the extent that these everyday functions are limited and impaired.”
The World Health Organization estimates that 1% of children worldwide I have autism but…
Source: www.newscientist.com