For a long time, autism was a developmental disorder that boys were primarily diagnosed with. On rare occasions, girls were diagnosed but it didn’t happen very often. Professionals just thought that it was something that boys usually had. For a girl to be considered autistic, she had to not talk at all and have severe symptoms. On the other hand, boys with milder symptoms were still diagnosed pretty easily. But, the truth is, girls have autism too! In the past, it was thought that the prevalence rate was 4.5:1, but recent studies have found it’s closer to 2.5:1 (Meng-Chuan, L. Lombardo, M., Auyeung, B., Chakrabarti, B., & Baron-Cohen, S. 2015). Even this figure may not be fully accurate, because autism research has always been primarily done with male participants.
Recently, more studies have been done investigating the male bias in autism diagnosis. One big finding is regarding the behavioral implications of an autism diagnosis. The diagnostic criteria has specific behavioural requirements that one must have to be diagnosed. It has been found that girls have different behaviours than boys do when exhibiting autism (sourceMeng-Chuan, L. Lombardo, M., Auyeung, B., Chakrabarti, B., & Baron-Cohen, S. 2015). Another thing to note is girls are regularly diagnosed later than boys for autism (Meng-Chuan, L. Lombardo, M., Auyeung, B., Chakrabarti, B., & Baron-Cohen, S. 2015). This is likely due to the restrictive criteria that doesn’t describe a lot of young girls.
After investigating multiple studies, it has been found that girls and boys exhibit autism in a lot of different ways; behavioural, cognitive, etc (Meng-Chuan, L. Lombardo, M., Auyeung, B., Chakrabarti, B., & Baron-Cohen, S. 2015). These studies have shown us that the diagnostic criteria needs to be changed to have gender identity differences. By not having those differences noted, we are doing a huge disservice to young girls with autism. It is likely that professionals would be biased in their diagnosing, because of what the research shows about autism right now. In order for girls to be better diagnosed, this needs to be changed.
Girls have autism, just like boys do. Some are higher functioning, some are not. But, these girls deserve support and they can’t get it if they are not diagnosed. Research shows us that girls are severely underdiagnosed and we need to change these statistics. We need to re evaluate our diagnostic criteria and make it more accessible to girls.
Reference:
Meng-Chuan, L., Lombardo, M., Auyeung, B., Chakrabarti, B., & Baron-Cohen, S. (2015). Sex/Gender Differences and Autism: Setting the Scene for Future Research. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 54(1), 11–24. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2014.10.003