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Autism's confusing cousins

(www.psychiatrymargins.com)
350 points Anon84 | 1 comments | 06 Dec 25 11:18 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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ricardo81 ◴[06 Dec 25 12:50 UTC] No.46172924[source]▶
I enjoyed reading that. My daughter had recently been diagnosed with "social anxiety" but had suspected it was autism.

Somewhat related, "Health Secretary Wes Streeting is launching an independent review into rising demand for mental health, ADHD and autism services in England." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce8q26q2r75o

Working in IT I've came across lots of extremely smart people with their quirks and eccentricity (not exclusive to smart people of course), I guess there's just a higher proportion of _quirky_ smart people in IT. A lot of the time it just seems to be introversion- it seems lack of interaction with society has to be justified.

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RobotToaster ◴[06 Dec 25 13:08 UTC] No.46173055[source]▶
It's worth noting the UK already commissioned a review that was published this year, that showed ADHD is in fact under-recognised here[0]. I can only assume they're commissioning a new one because that one gave the "wrong" answer.

For a long time ADHD was ignored or dismissed in the UK as an "americanitis", so it's no surprise that there's a backlog of people who weren't diagnosed in childhood.

[0] https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/report-of-the-independe...

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1. captainbland ◴[06 Dec 25 13:17 UTC] No.46173126[source]▶
I think a crucial bit of context is that in the UK, many people who are seeking diagnosis as adults grew up in areas where there were no or very few child psychiatry services in the 80s/90s. In such areas only very profound cases would be referred to out of area services. Most people with neurodevelopment disorders in such areas were diagnosed with SpLDs like dyspraxia or dyslexia which could be diagnosed by community paediatricians, usually with evidence from educational psychologists and occupational therapists.

In fact the pattern is almost the opposite of what you'd see in the US where it would be hard to get diagnosed with a SpLD and e.g. ADHD was more widely recognised. But the rub lies in the fact that ADHD, ASD and many SpLDs have fairly high rates of comorbidities with one another, to the point where if you've got dyspraxia and no other diagnosable comorbidity, you're actually in the minority of people with it.