Published on 12, July, 2020
I was trawling through some data, and I wondered if anyone has any official percentage of HFA (high functioning autistics) over the general population of ASD people. The psychiatrist and the therapist at PsychiatryUK told me that high functioning people (able to work privately and live independently) are a minority, but declined to give me any numbers. We also agreed that the "math genius" archetype of ASD adult is way overrepresented in media, since it is quite rare in real life.
Does anyone have any hard data about that?
The issue is that this is quite a loose definition- just because someone cannot stay in one job doesn’t mean that they can’t in another more suitable work environment- it’s not a fixed characteristic- the ability to ‘function’ depends on environment and what else is going on.
The shrink told me that it's a functional definition, similar to the three levels of ASD. It's more something like: "are you generally able to do grocery shopping and attend an appointment or a job interview without having a meltdown?"