2023-08-08 15:04:17
If there is something that is not difficult for him, it is to express himself. “In a pandemic, in the urgency of the pandemic, in the anguish of the pandemic, I started to feel a huge relief when I realized that I didn’t have to run into people, that I didn’t have to hug them or give them kisses, that I could stay at home, that we were all wearing masks and at a distance. Because I hated being touched, I always considered that if someone was too close to me, unless it was my partner, I felt that they were invading me, that they were too close to me, even in the case of people from my family.
This is Andy C. , He is 40 years oldand very recently it was diagnosed as a person on the autism spectrum. An autistic adult woman who from her childhood felt that she was “different, strange, different, I don’t know the qualifying adjective you want to insert there, but I always felt that. It was like something that wasn’t right, that it didn’t work, that it was broken, that it was failed. Sometimes, from the originality, from the unique vision, because all those adjectives depend on the context and can be for something good, or rare, or that you don’t want to be around, or bad”.
Because being different, as is each of the boys, girls, youth, adults who are on the autism spectrum It’s hard in the neurotypical worldin the world of those who believe and consider themselves “normal”, which is nothing more than a way of describing an average term of socializing, studying, working, walking through life.
Andy’s case is not “strange”. It is unique as is every human being, but there are more and more people who, over 18 years of age, are diagnosed within the Conditions of the Autism Spectrum (CEA). Invisible, because although the social awareness about EAC in boys and girls is more present, the autistic adult is still ignored.
The confession that in front of the screen Canal 9 did the driver Maja Lozano on Friday, July 28, when he explained that he had received a diagnosis of autism at the age of 51, he generated surprise in many people, disbelief in others and until rejection in groups of active visitors to social networks who soon unloaded hate, qualifying adjectives and even made in home diagnostics, without any kind of support. How is it possible for a person to “become autistic” at age 51? they asked. It’s not really, that’s not what happens. You have been autistic foreverautism is a neurodevelopmental condition that involves the biological and also the environmenthe. Which are scarce in reality are the diagnoses. Y even more among the female sex.
sexist statistics
Although in Argentina there are no precise statistics, those of the United States are usually taken. And in that country the incidence of CEA has been increasing strongly: if in the year 2000 it was estimated that 1 in 150 children were autistic, this changed already in 2006 to become 1 in 110. By the year 2012 the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), that incidence climbed to 1 in 69 boys averaging eight years of age. The newest estimate was released this year: 1 in 36.
Within this period of time, the description that CEA affected boys more than girls, at a rate of 4 boys for every girl, was accepted as valid. There was even talk that it was a “condition of male children, white and with a good socioeconomic position.” In reality, the scientific evidence was showing that it was more about inequality of access to health and diagnoses. More and more boys and girls are diagnosed as autistic within different ethnic, social, economic, and sexual groups.
Gabriel Grivel, a psychologist and specialist in the diagnosis of CEA in adults for 19 years, is very clear about it. “Some current studies indicate that the prevalence could even be two men to one and this has been happening for 10 years at a scientific level. What happens is that this prevalence has grown because the diagnosis of autism has been thought with tests designed for men and done by men and that made it very difficult to detect women. If we review the prevalences 15, 20 years ago, we find that it was not a prevalence of 4 to 1 but rather 20 to 1”.
And he emphasizes: “With the visibility of what is happening, the fact that today we know that women are more difficult to detect, they are trying to generate tools or tests that consider the characteristics of the female gender.”
live with doubts
“I always felt different, to put it in some way. While my peers played with dolls or house, I loved looking for insects and investigating them in my microscope, I spent hours reading or watching movies, I enjoyed all the activities in solitude. Physical contact and displays of affection always cost me a lot. In adolescence everything got worse, it was impossible for me to generate groups of friends and get along with my peers. My panic attacks and dysfluency in speech began. I would have loved to receive the diagnosis in time to have more tools at that time. I suffered a lot”, says Guadalupe M., at 30 years old.
His path, as usually happens with all autistic adults, was hard and arduous: “Before reaching an autism specialist, I went through many previous diagnoses, they told me it was depression, generalized anxiety disorder, among other conditions. In my case, receiving the diagnosis helped me acquire the necessary tools to be able to move from day to day. It is clear to me that perhaps I do not need as many support tools as a non-speaking autistic person may need, but that does not make me less autistic. People overwhelm me, I stutter every time I get nervous, I can’t use public transportation because there are so many people that give me panic attacks, changes in my routine or in my life overwhelm me so much that I have to lock myself in the room for several hours. darkness of my house to recover, I don’t understand jokes and sometimes they label me as not very empathetic because I answer in a semi-robotic or cold way to people’s emotions”.
Grivel summarizes some of the differences that scientific and clinical evidence is showing between how autism manifests itself between women and men: “It is showing that they are very different, it is not known why. There are scientific theories and possible explanations that have to do with the social demands that exist on the role of women. Autistic men tend to be more easily detectable and women, having these strong demands, generate a defense mechanism known as masking or camouflage. It is what makes them manage to cover up their own characteristics by making a great cognitive effort and trying to be functional to those social demands”.
What is the result of this? Make screening for autism in women (and teens) that much more difficult. “The symptoms of the autistic man are purer, they are easier in the eye of the evaluator, they can be clumsy, they can be arrogant, arrogant, not taking the interlocutor into account. Women manage to camouflage themselves, cover up these difficulties in communication. And then at the time of diagnosis you have to be more refined to be able to detect those social issues that they themselves are commenting on, everything that small social events generate for them ”, sums up Grivel.
in chain
For CEA experts it is not uncommon to diagnose autistic adults. They increasingly receive those who are over 50 or 60 years old. This being the case, it is not uncommon for mothers, fathers, with sons or daughters to arrive first who are diagnosed with CEA and then, later, decide to go through a diagnostic process themselves.
Marian D. is 50 years old and is a music therapist, that is, she has worked with children and young people with different conditions and severe disorders. She was no stranger to the CEA issue. And she has a son diagnosed as autistic.
“When he entered the therapy circuit, they began to point out things about him and I thought “but I’m the same” or “I was the same as his age.” Then the videos began to appear on tiktok and on instagram about cases of adult autism and I felt identified with everything. One day I talked to my mom, she had also seen information about adult autism and she told me: I think you’re there. At that moment I decided to do an interview that confirmed that I am on the spectrum.
Claudio Waisburg, an expert neurologist in development and with twenty years of experience in CEA in infants and children and director of the Soma Institute, warns that “in many developmental and learning disorders, a father or a mother is diagnosed when the child is diagnosed or daughter. With autism, with attention hyperactivity disorders, with dyslexia, it is extremely common in my experience to see a diagnostic profile in a father or mother that was hidden or that had been compensated in some way and is diagnosed after the child. And it is very common for that father or mother to comment that the profile of the child is very similar to that of an uncle, a grandfather. Genetics in this is fundamental and we are the union of the genetic information of both parents”.
Dolores T, with her 23 years and a very recent diagnosis sums it up with a smile. “Being different as a child was very difficult. It resulted in self harm and very deep sadness. She felt like she didn’t belong anywhere. The diagnosis, sought by myself, in a long and difficult process, helped me explain everything about myself. I feel happier, with more tools to face my life. In addition, the diagnosis helped me stop masking who I am. I don’t feel alone because there is a whole autistic community that supports me and helps me.”
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