i would like to say that it is not just adults who 'pass wel enough' who slipped through the cracks. i was diagnosed at 20 and my diagnoser said it was so obvious i have autism (by the icd10 critera) that he has no idea why i wasnt diagnosed in early childhood. there are plenty of people who dont and cant passat all who werent diagnosed bc classism sexism abusive childhood settings and parents who refused help for their childs etc etc etc
Anonymous
I know that. My point was simply that we know the different ways autism can look in adults, that it can even look so little like autism on first glance that it slips past, and we have actually known this for a very long time, so there really is no good reason to not have more experts on autism in adults.
I was actually thinking back to an article I read something like ten years ago (when you’re young, and you’re autistic, and people know you’re autistic, they will inevitably inundate you with articles). It was about adults exactly like that, people in their 30s, 40s, even their 50s, who got by for a long time without an autism diagnosis simply because they could pass enough. And about how experts were starting to recognize the signs of that. And yet somehow, adult autism experts are rarer than hens teeth.
That there are other problems with obtaining autism diagnoses is a given, but that the “You can speak/hold a job/show emotions/etc. so you can’t have autism” ignorance is still so prevalent, when we’ve known for more than a decade that autistic people can do those things, boggles my mind.