Broad spectrum

Discovery

BBC

Science, Technology

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 16 November 2020

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Autism is a lifelong condition, often seen as particularly ‘male’. Yet a growing number of women, and those assigned female at birth, are being diagnosed as autistic in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and beyond. Writer and performer Helen Keen is one of them, and she’s found this diagnosis has helped her make sense of many aspects of her life, from growing up with selective mutism, to struggling to fit in as a young adult. In this programme Helen asks why she, like a growing number of others, had to wait till she was well into adulthood before finding her place on the autistic spectrum. She discovers that for many years psychologists believed that autism was rarely seen in women and non-binary people. Now it is accepted that people often display autistic traits in different way - for example, they may learn to ‘camouflage’ and behave in a neurotypical way - but at what cost? Helen talks to others like her who have had late diagnoses, and finds out if knowing they are on the autistic spectrum has given them insight into how they can navigate the pressures on them from contemporary society. She also explores how we can value and celebrate neurodiversity. Helen also talks to psychologists Professor Francesca Happé, of the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience in London, and Dr Steven Stagg of Anglia Ruskin University about their research into autism. Picture: Geometric camouflage pattern, Credit: Yuri Parmenov/Getty Images

Transcript

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0:28.3	Newscast, listen on BBC Sounds. This is the sound of climate change.
0:37.0	Find out what it all means at the end of this podcast. I think what happens for a lot of autistic people is other autistic people walk up to them and go,
1:00.0	hey did you know you're autistic?
1:02.0	This is pretty much what happened for me.
1:05.6	autism is a lifelong condition it's estimated that approximately 1% of the
1:11.9	population is on the autistic spectrum.
1:15.0	In recent years, many people particularly but certainly not exclusively women,
1:20.0	are being diagnosed as autistic in adulthood, into theirs 30s 40s and beyond.
1:25.6	I'm Helen Keene a writer and performer and I'm one of those women.
1:29.8	And what I want to explore in this program is why did it take so long for someone like me to be diagnosed?
1:35.5	What are the consequences of autistic traits being missed?
1:39.5	And isn't autism diagnosis helpful or even necessary?
1:43.8	I spoke to a group of people who were also diagnosed as adults, and some of the clinicians
1:49.0	who were working to identify the adults who would benefit from support and improve diagnosis for all autistic people.
1:56.0	We'll hear about some of the life changes, large and small, that result from being identified as on the spectrum in adulthood and how the process of diagnosis
2:05.8	is itself in turn changing.
	...

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