Q & A Session with David Skuse and Will Mandy
Q1: What does all this mean in the context of early intervention?
A1: Information from at-risk siblings revealed if assessment is done skilfully it can be picked up early in females. No evidence of intervention for females. The focus is on co-existing conditions or disorders. It is imperative to screen adolescents with anxiety, depression, self harm or eating disorder for an Autsim Spectrum Condition.
Q2: If someone is able to camouflage and there functioning better, what does this mean in terms of intervention and getting better, can this be seen as getting better?
A2: People often find their own effective ways and strategies of handling difficulties. We need to be aware of the consequences (i.e. lying down in the foetal position after a demanding day pom arriving home). Many adolescents strive to be model students at school and all hell breaks loose at home. Parents are concerned and mental health, blame the parents because they are not causing difficulties at school; which them leads to family therapy and parenting programs for the parents. This is sometimes seen in primary or elementary school.
Q3: Is there a higher percentage of Gender Identity issues in females with Autism?
A3: There is small growing literature on gender identity issues in females with ASC, but we are not aware of how common the wish to change gender is.
Q4: In the parent reported study you mentioned they weren’t formally diagnosed?
A4: The Korean study ascertained cases that had not been diagnosed in the general population. A small proportion of those in the general population had been ascertained as being autistic. A lot of kids were picked up as school aged children, particularly girls who had not been picked up earlier as in clinically diagnosed. In the Bristol one, we screened at 8 and by mid-adolescence virtually everyone who had a diagnosis at that time had been picked up as having a high score in our survey and of course there were lots of children on our survey, the vast majority, almost all of them up with them, those who scored as high on the Social Communication Traits of an Autistic type may well have had secondary psychiatric problems during adolescence but those data are still being analysed.
Q5: Are there any resources in particular for supporting suspected or maybe undiagnosed girls, teens, women for females, that are suspecting that they themselves or someone else
A5: We are not aware of anything here in the UK. We have similar problems in the UK are almost certainly not being picked up and even if they are, the resources to help them are very limited indeed under the National Health Service (NAS). There is enormous popular literature on being a female with ASC. It is worth checking out the work of Tony Attwood on this topic and Tania Marshall and people like them. We are at the stage of interesting, rich and powerful descriptions of the female phenotype but now we need to get a proper evidence base that reflects scientific testing of all these ideas coming out in the literature and to my knowledge those studies haven’t been done yet.
It is wonderful to see clinical anecdotal and qualitative evidence and evidence-based research merge. Thank you to Sfari, Greg Boustead, Dr. David Skuse and Dr. Will Mandy.
About Tania. A Marshall
For more information on the female phenotype, the best-selling book entitled “I Am AspienGirl: The Unique Characteristics, Traits and Gifts of Young Females on the Autism Spectrum” is available for order now. The sequel entitled “I am AspienWoman: The Unique Characteristics, Traits and Gifts of Adult Females on the Autism Spectrum”, with a large Mentor section of real-life adult females headed up by Dr. Temple Grandin, is being released shortly. Both are available from www.aspiengirl.com or Amazon
For more information on female Autism, please visit www.taniamarshall.com