my proposal of diagnosis for females

Post Reply New Topic

The current diagnosis is based on social skills deficit and repetitive behavior. Here are the changes I propose for female assessment based on all the research that I read about it:

- comparison to other age group females as controls, not males or general population. Seems obvious but currently this is not being done.
- focus on literal language and sensory sensitivities instead of repetitive behavior. Girls present much less repetitive behavior, some have subtle stims like moving hair strand.
- not measure the social mistakes made or lack of social understanding but rather how much effort it takes for a social interaction an NT girl would take for granted. That also includes the shorter time of filling social cup and meltdowns when getting home.

I believe those points are a main step for less females going undiagnosed.
if you are a female and don't fit the female aspie descriptions it's okay, those traits are based on large groups so of course individual particularities are allowed

You are exactly right, subtle and even invisible stims are incredibly common.

How might they measure the "effort it takes for a social interaction?"
Blood pressure? Heart rate? Electroencephalography? Galvanic skin response? It might work...

How do they know, superficially, the difference between affected "cutesy" shyness and social difficulty?
Or behavior tested in Clinical safety vs. a real-life dance "par-tay!" with intimidatingly sexy people?

...Can't wait for an objective test: blood, brain scan, DNA -or something unambiguous.

I think you can just ask the person, at what point do you need a break from social interaction.

Or observe if younger.

With regard to issue of repetitive behaviors vs. sensory stims/differences in self-regulation:
For me, I'd speculate that sensory disturbances (hypersensitivity or excessively negative) are a reason for my repetitive behavior in some domains (blocking out what I dislike),
and/or that my heightened sense of enjoyment (saturating myself with what makes me feel good) is why I repeat experiences I like.

For instance, I like the music I like, so I play it a lot-and it helps to screen out the other noises in my environment that bother me (traffic/motors, children shrieking outside).
And I like what I like in part bc. since it's the same song or songs-I'm guaranteed a comforting familiar safe known experience that will soothe and please me, rather than some unpredictable novel strange unknown thing that I'll probably find jarring and irritating