you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]Seahorse 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I've sat in on an older siblings autism testing and it's very extensive. They didn't end up diagnosing with autism in the end.

But that was years ago, things might have changed. If it's diagnosed it feels like it's over diagnosed now.

[–]lovelyspearmintLesbeing a lesbian 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I only got my diagnosis this year, but when I got an anecdotal diagnosis years ago, I went down a rabbit hole of research to understand it as much as I could, and I've noticed that there are quite a few kids and adults with it, although it does show up differently in girls than boys to an extent.

I don't think it's overdiagnosed, it's just the fact that it's better understood these days and there are better ways of identifying it (i.e. if a close family member has it, child may have inherited it, the new eye test). Your sibling might have indeed had a milder form of autism, but due to it not presenting the way they expected it to, they were not diagnosed. However, there is still an overabundance of self-diagnosers and people who've gone on webMD and thought 'ive got a few of those symptoms, I must have it'. The whole issue with any mental disorders is that it's pervasive and actively impacts a person's life in a negative way. If a person has minor symptoms but their life isn't negatively impacted or requires workarounds for it, it's not a disability.