Why are females misdiagnosed and under diagnosed?

Hi i'm a big sister of someone on the spectrum and was wondering why girls and women are misdiagnosed and under diagnosed! what are peoples thoughts about it?

 Slight smile

  • I’ll message so I can re read and try and make sense but anyone ask my questions in person or telephone I freeze....

  • I’m overwhelmed and in shock I was going to just put up a hello post and explain and introduce but I am in a house full of autistics including me and my daughter I know have PDA form of it really scTwo heartsed where to reach out to, as my medical history is mental and hormone diagnosis nobody researched it’s a neurologist specialist and so do all my family I refuse to go into the struggling system my fTwo heartsily can’t support each other as we’re all struggling? I have a couple of people who can advocate for me but right now I could do with quiet and someone who specialises in autism in females especiallTwo heartsPDA I don’t know whether I can fight again I just want it easier for all I love around me by being understood we’re different not wrong Two hearts

  • @Misfit61 Thank you for your help! Slight smile it was a fab article!, I also found this incase anyone is interested?

    http://www.nasen.org.uk/resources/resources.girls-and-autism-flying-under-the-radar.html

    click the first PDF link Slight smile

  • Yes I would need support to set it up but is info online I think. I think one of my interests must be searching information . I like looking things up. I know that feeling nothing or very little gets done because go into freeze mode til the anxiety making task is done. Have you got a strategy yet.. ask before you start what is required.. never as simple as that if she's not there. Think we need another new one we need about 2x per week.  No appointments available for cab til 24th. I'm trying to sort stuff , clear up getting ready for my guinea pig to come home. And I found some shillings and pence saving stamps! X

  • I think you would need support to set up the support group!  I'm sure you don't see yourself that way but it definitely comes across as does your practicality. I'm on anxious autopilot as have to go do my difficult garden in a bit, so nothing else gets done.  I've lost track of our latest wiffle thread too so apologies to anyone for being off topic.

  • Hello Spotty. Thank you that's thoughtful of you to say so. As you can imagine I don't see myself in that light. I have absolutely no idea where my future lies. I keep wondering about setting up some sort of support group for the differently wired locally but not ready to do that yet Certainly desperately needed. I try to give a balanced view when answer queries much more emotional in my own. How are you today? ()x 

  • Misfit, you are this forums star information and link finder, you are brilliant at it, and humane sensible advice. Maybe it could be your role in life somehow in the future? ()x

  • Girls wear masks and portray themselves as others want them to be....so their true Aspie self gets buried until their masking strategies crack..... 

  • @Hope Hi Slight smile thank you for replying! I found it really frustrating when doing research that girls slip through the net so easily because of the gender stereotypes surrounding ASD. Do you think the diagnostic process is also too tailored to boys and men, as well as teachers having misconceptions of autism being something predominantly male?

  • @Misfit61 Thank you very much Slight smile This is fab, I'm looking at why girls are under diagnosed or misdiagnosed for my EPQ at college. I'm really interested in it as I have a younger brother on the spectrum and see a lot of myself in him. In my project, I'm focusing on not just the diagnostic system, but also the impact that schools have on girls being misdiagnosed or under diagnosed and also what they can do to actually help. Do you think the issues in schools are part of the misconceptions and lack of knowledge teachers may have? or is it the girls ability to mask or camouflage their traits that compromise things (its probably both, but I'm just really interested to find out what other people think about it) Thank you for replying!

  • Girls are socialised differently to boys, and this can result in them displaying slightly different autistic behaviour. For example, I had a strong interest in the actress Kate Winslet and babies instead of the more talked about autistic ''obsession'' with trains or computers (considered to be more boy typical by society at large). Girls might also be more passive and present as ''shy'' at school instead of loud and disruptive. However, it is also a case of what teachers, etc, look for. Even if a girl displays acting out behaviours or male typical interests, these behaviours might be explained away as her just being a ''tom boy'', whereas in a boy, the teacher might think, mmm, I wonder if they're autistic?, because of the long standing and erroneous view (passed down the generations) that autism is a ''male'' thing.

  • All research and knowledge evolves over time. All studies of autism in the scheme of time are relatively new. Often the most obvious are looked at first. Even as short a time ago as 20-25 years ago many people, including professionals, didn't accept autism as something real. When that began to be accepted and more studies on it were done they couldn't decide how it happened. All of the "Neurodiverse " conditions quite often but not always ( it can present in any way to all sexes)  "present" differently in male than female. Initially it was though only boys had autism, adhd, developmental coordination disorder, Tourette's etc. Boys traits were frequently more obvious than girls. It was thought that the conditions petered out during adolescence and adults didn't have these conditions. In my school years no one had really heard of them. Later on more generally Autism was non verbal boys with odd behaviour that stimmed a lot and didn't really ever grow up, adhd was loud unruly boys who hadn't been taught how to behave and Dcd was clumsy child syndrome. Over the last 20 years as professionals in the field of Neurodiversity have taken specialist interest in these areas much more is being discovered and discussed. It is now known that it is lifelong, most likely genetic, that although statistics say it is still predominantly males these statistics would alter if all the females were diagnosed. It is only recently that people like Lorna Wing, Tania Marshall, Dr Gould, Sarah Hendrickx to name but a few and similarly with Dcd and adhd that the differences are being noted and recorded. As all this is so new research on adult women is almost non existent. Services are aimed towards children and young adults but there are some for those more severely disabled by autism. But those with higher functioning or Aspergers are not recognised as needing as much help so slip through the net. Only recently too has there been mention of asd and aging. The other part of this is that professionals are not as up to date with this thinking and so if they haven't the knowledge and experience they misdiagnose because by adulthood many women have managed to get to that point without much help. They are often diagnosed with anything but Aspergers or equivalent; they get diagnosed as being anxious, depressed, and other mental health conditions way before any enquiry of asd or adhd etc. So it is often found that at key points of stress or change that traits are exacerbated. Or parents of children who are going through a diagnosis will recognise what is being said as a reflection of themselves.  

    I hope others will give their views too. Mine probably isn't accurate in fact, sequence or terminology but will give you a general idea for you to follow up. 

  • I'm male but from my reading there is apparently more pressure on girls and women to fit in with society and they therefore make more of an effort to hide their autistic traits. I suspect also because most people on the spectrum are male that the services diagnosing autism are less likely to think of autism when diagnosing a female.