Newly diagnosed Autistic Adults

Comments on forum are a strong argument for adult diagnosis of autism.

I was so deeply moved just moments ago.
I have a routine of checking in with each of the four on line autism forums I attend every morning.
One person had written that she was newly diagnosed and that she wondered what other people’s reactions to diagnosis had been.

People began to check in and tell their stories.
Some said they were initially shocked because they had no idea.
Others said they felt deep loss for things that might have been.
Some said they felt angry that they had spent their whole lives not knowing why they were different.
Some said they refused to accept diagnosis and fought it to begin with, but eventually became convinced the diagnosis was correct, and accepted it.

Every person (and more checking in as the morning unfolds – it is 5:30 AM as I type this) said that they felt relief because they finally understood they were not bad, wrong, morally inferior, weak willed, crazy, broken, hateful, spiteful, mean, cold, or any of the other labels they were given all the years they did not know and understand about their autism. Diagnosis explained so much!

Each person said it was a relief to have the answers to why life had seemed so difficult for them in so many ways.

Each person said it made so much difference in how they felt about themselves, how they saw their past struggles, and how diagnosis helped them make a new life with fewer struggles since knowing about their autism.

That parallels my own experience and speaks volumes about the tremendous need for finding lost autistic adults and giving them the tools they need to live better lives through gaining and understanding their own diagnosis.

I learned something from an article on autism and ageing the other day.
I had not thought of it before in this way.
This requires the assumption that autism has always been with us, rather than thinking it is an epidemic or sudden plague that appeared out of the blue in the middle of last century when it was first suspected and began to be explored.
Stick with me here.
If there are approximately 2 percent of every generation who are autistic, and autism has been missed as a diagnosis in adults ( childhood being measured from birth to the age limit of 20 years old), and there are currently ( as stated in the statistics I read) 5,500 autistic (diagnosed) people turning 20 years old every year here in the USA:
think about the 5,500 autistic adults in every generation each year who missed diagnosis simply because it was not done before 1980, and until very recently diagnosis was very rare.
People of the baby boom generation will have had more autistic people because there were more people born in that generation…
Half the baby boom population has retired, the other half is in progress of ‘coming of retirement age’. Using those same statistics, can we generalize that there are approximately 5,500 undiagnosed adults with autism reaching retirement age each year? How many are in the ‘over 65’ age category?

There are approximately 275,000 (between the age of 20 and 70) undiagnosed autistic adults in the USA alone. Of course this is only an estimate. Nobody knows, because that population is currently hidden. Actual statistics( I have looked at so many studies) estimate autism in all populations occurs at a rate of between 1 and 5 percent. I have assumed a conservative 2 percent for this discussion.

The relief of suffering in knowing yourself to be diagnosed with autism could reach and help so many people. We need professionals to diagnose, study, treat, provide therapies, care for, and otherwise support this group.

I hope that together we can raise awareness of this need and that we will soon see services provided for these truly lost and struggling generations.

OK, this is corny, but you will understand.

“I once was lost but now I am found”.
It has made all the difference to me. I hope others can be ‘found’ too.