But it especially amuses me that this is about autism. Almost any high functioning autistic will pick up on this instantly. And then be reminded the normie world still don’t geddit…
No one should ever make comments about “Any/everyone with autism” because it is this kind of wild generalisation about them which makes the world so difficult to navigate for people with autism. You are assuming that the statistics are obviously going to come across as instantly wrong to almost every high functioning autistic person. I don’t believe that’s true at all and I didn’t realise it instantly, but I think it is a highly interesting set of statistics worthy of discussion.
What makes us sure that both:
1) autism presents equally clinically in all populations, and
2) that *diagnosis* (which the sign says itself - not incidence, diagnosis) is equal among race, geography, access to healthcare, and class? I don’t for a second believe this.
What should obvious to everyone, regardless of them being on the autistic spectrum or not, after no more than a few moments with a calculator is that the UK figure suggests a rate of diagnosis of
1% of the population, while the worldwide figure suggests a rate of
10%.
Now there is something going on here because you would expect the worldwide rate of diagnoses (with the world including several third world countries with no access to healthcare, including most notably the United States of America) to be
lower than that of the United Kingdom with its National Health Service, although beyond that I believe the most significant factors here are age and gender.
Diagnosis is far more common among males than females, however this does not necessarily mean prevalence is distributed this way; females are more likely to not realise they have it or show symptoms that allows others to notice.
For a long time, Autism, like colourblindness, was dismissed as a “male condition” which females were incapable of possessing. This is of course nonsense and incidence is similar between males and females, but they display different “symptoms” (I would have liked to have avoided the use of the word symptoms because it is not really fitting. Autism really isn’t an illness and shouldn’t be treated like one) although rates of diagnosis remain higher. Now rates of diagnoses within males has only been at a reasonable level since about the 1990s, which is why it is rare to come across older people with Autism. The figure I have heard and accept for the proportion of people with autism today is 1 in 30, or
3.33%, meaning on average there is someone with autism in
every school class of 30 pupils (and despite this very
very few teachers have received any training at all on how to correctly handle people with autism, leading many of them to have absolutely dreadful experiences with the education system and develop mental health problems into adolescence, rather than them being treated as the asset to society that they can be, particularly in industries such as the railway, which is a very sad and unfortunate state of affairs for us to be in and for which I attribute the majority of the blame to teachers) which is much higher than the figure of 1%, because of course there will be people now in their 80s or 90s, including women, who have lived with autism all their lives but never received a formal diagnosis.
Why do you assume that someone with autism would pick up on this instantly? I worked with a lady with autism who was quite annoyed at times that people assumed that as she was autistic that she would be a maths genius.
I am glad she expressed her annoyance that people with autism are forced to deal with such stereotypes. Another damaging one is the assumption that autistic people cannot set foot in airports due to them being in some way too busy, despite there being no attention given to the fact that autistic people may be highly interested in planes, their numbering, the physics behind how they fly, the luggage conveyor belt system within the airport, items available in duty free or any other factors which prevent it from being an unbearable experience. The reality is it depends as much on the person as it does with anyone else.
The recent BBC documentary with Paddy McGuinness about his children and their experiences living with autism served as a good insight into some of the issues faced both by people growing up with autism and their parents. Of particular interest was that his daughter is able to repeat bits of sentences she has overheard such as the question “Can I have some biscuits?” when she is not able to sting a sentence together to convey how she is feeling, to which Paddy is almost certain to reply “Yes of course you can have some biscuits” without realising that simply feeding her biscuits does nothing to help her in the long term with the difficulties faced by people with autism and the documentary follows him and his wife after their realisation of this. The same goes for the two documentaries about Katie Price and Harvey, who is frequently heard expressing his interest in trains such as Gatwick Express and Thameslink.
The latest studies do seem to suggest that ASD is not dependent on race or socioeconomic background (it is, however, more prevalent in males).
But for your second point, absolutely. Clearly it isn't going to be diagnosed as often where healthcare is more lacking, where resources are going to be concentrated on basic physical care. And as regards race, even in a developed country like the UK, diagnosis varies wildly across racial groups, for reasons which include access to specialists, language and social stigma.
Yes, this is a common myth. Whilst there is *some* evidence to suggest that *some* types of autism may have a link to maths skills, the percentage of autistic people who are naturally highly skilled in maths is, like the general population, quite small.
Is it *actually* more prevalent in males? I don’t believe that this is known either way even with the pinnacle of modern scientific knowledge. Social stigma is certainly the biggest problem for people with autism, with people constantly being unhelpful due to them following assumptions and stereotypes of the same kind as are exhibited in racist behaviours. I have encountered people who are certainly autistic (with one being able to list all 1990s British boxing world champions in chronological order for example) but have absolutely no intention of seeking a formal diagnosis only because this will then subject them to the social stigma which they have so far escaped in life. I do believe the proportion of autistic people who are highly skilled in maths is higher than in the general population, but I for example am not highly skilled in instant mental arithmetic, so this is not necessarily what that means.
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