Welcome to Why Not Me, the World Podcast, hosted by Tony Mayator.

Broadcasting from Music City, USA, Nashville, Tennessee.

Join us as our guests tell us their stories.

Some will make you laugh, some will make you cry.

Real life people who will inspire and show that you are not alone in this world.

Hopefully you gain more awareness, acceptance, and a better understanding for autism around the world.

Hi, I'm Tony Mantor.

Welcome to Why Not Me the World, Humanity Over Handcuffs, the Silent Crisis Special Event.

Joining us today is Ruth Johnston. She will share her personal experience with her autistic son, who subsequently developed schizophrenia, and discuss how this led to her establishing aOT for Allegheny County in Pennsylvania.

I'm delighted to have her join us bringing a wealth of knowledge on this topic. Thanks for coming on.

Thank you. It's my pleasure. Can you tell us about your autistic son?

My son is 38 now, so he's a little older. Nobody was identifying autistic, unless they were

counter autism back then. And so he wasn't identified until he was a teenager and never had

services and things like that. I never had the experience of being the parent in the IEP meeting

and working with it. I homeschooled him and we just dealt with the bumps.

I love him dearly and it was on the one side. It was great delight and on the other side,

sheer terror and misery because he was not easy. And when he was, when he was 13, we started to see

the onset of that's something I should talk about, what it looked like for him to start to get schizophrenia because it look over, it took at least 10 years to know that's what it was.

That's important. I look at the parents who have autistic kids and I almost have a bad attitude because there's a overwhelming sense of,

we're going to take this school to court, we're going to make sure everything is perfect,

you're going to do all of these things.

And I'm thinking, when they turn 18 and some of them get schizophrenia,

...