March 2024: Monthly Mental Condition: Autism

This month, the neurodivergent condition we’re going to be focusing on autism. Despite what people may think, autism doesn’t just mean you act younger than your age. It’s trouble understanding social cues (i.e. what’s right and wrong). Essentially, it’s a social disorder. Autism studies have been mainly done on men, with women being virtually absent. So, the symptoms that are seen in females as opposed to males haven’t been studied almost at all, so doctors don’t tend to look for those differentiating symptoms. The first child psychologist to conduct a study on autism conducted a study on 12 children, only 3 of which being girls. When Hans Asperger researched autism, all of his subjects were boys. Diagnostic criteria has been entirely based on male behavior. These autism gender differences have led to misdiagnosis and under diagnosis of autism in women. Autistic males don’t tend to show much desire for social interaction, whereas autistic females, while they have trouble making and maintaining friends, still show a large desire to be social. Males with autism tend to barely (if at all) camouflage or mask their symptoms, but females, in an attempt to be more normal, do almost everything they can to mask their symptoms. Autistic males tend to be obsessed with less normal things, such as gathering information on things, collecting things, or objects, females tend to have more normal interests, but are extremely obsessed. Men with autism tend to not give in to social pressures, however, autistic females usually try to fit into their gender roles as a daughter, wife, or mother, and take it very seriously, whether they like it or not. Another difference is hormones. Part of the reason that females are so different is because we have different hormones, so they react differently to brain functions. I hope you enjoyed this Monthly Mental Condition talk!