Thousands of GIRLS may have undiagnosed autism because they

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I've been reading here for awhile and there seem to be quite a few male Aspies or Auties that seem to want to compare themselves to female Aspies or Auties and claim that they have it worse.

Does anyone know why this is? What inspires that sort of thing?

Yep, for every 4 autistic boys that get bullied 1 autistic girl also does which is still rather frequently.

Are you are stratifying your statistics based on IQ? what is intellectual disability? if it includes learning disability then there's plenty of smart kids out there who are labelled with an intellectual disability.

A further interesting observation, In mainstream government schools here in the south eastern education division of Melbourne Australia. According to the school psychologist - Of the total number of children diagnosed with autism attending mainstream school numbering in several thousand my daughter is the only girl diagnosed with autism attending a mainstream government school. Apparently all the girls in the region we live in are diagnosed with Aspergers, and there are about a hundred boys diagnosed with autism attending government schools with integration aides.

The only reason I found this out is because I've been trying to search for schools in my area with other girls with autism for my daughter to be friends with.

You have a source for those statistics?

That was sort of a joke about the 4:1 male/female diagnostic ratio although it sounds likely since boys get picked-on much more often anyways whether they're autistic or not.

I don't think that's true. There are particular reasons that boys are bullied violently, but those aren't really something that can be generalized to all boys.

Also, the 4:1 ratio is almost certainly skewed in the direction of "many girls go undiagnosed."

I think bullying for boys is just generally different to bullying amongst girls, not more prevalent, just different. Girls seem to tend more towards psychological bullying, whereas boys tend more to violently beating each other up. But this is in no way set in stone - many girls can be violent towards each other too, and many boys can be psychological bullies. And of course there is the cross gender bullying too...

This article is vague. How do girls hide the signs of autism bester than boys? What are female children doing during this masking?

This is one of those social scripts I mentioned in another thread. In this case, to at least some extent, it is how girls are being subtly blamed for not being diagnosed, which is more generally due to sexism and how a girl's behavior is viewed differently than a boy's behavior.

There are studies on these perceptions. One I recall had two groups of people observing a crying baby. One group was told the baby was male, and they mostly concluded that the baby was angry. The other group was told the baby was female, and they mostly concluded the baby was upset and sad.

After breaking a number of computer monitors and throwing chairs at students and screaming when somebody opens the classroom sliding door I can safely conclude that my daughter isn't making any attempt to hide her autism

I actually have no idea, I keep hearing that girls are better at hiding their autism than boys. But to be honest one of the biggest clues to my daughter being ASD is that she is exactly like me when I was her age (my mother has confirmed my feelings on that). So if I can recognise my own traits in her then how well is she hiding it? are those obvious signs being overlooked because she is a female?

I think I've already said this, but I suspect that it does have more to do with girls being more easily dismissed than boys. What rings alarm bells when seen in boys is dismissed as silly girlishness in females.

I have a friend who is head of autism services in one the neighbouring counties. And he often complains about how he wants to help females with autism but can't because they are so heavily misdiagnosed; Usually with OCD or bipolar - because those are seen as typically 'female' conditions. I won't repeat the language he uses when describing those health professionals who do this!

I wasn't able to hide the signs when I was a child.

But I am not convinced one way or other that females are not being diagnosed due to perceptions vs. large male to female ratio in HFA. I think at least part of the mf ratio in hfa is real, and it drops in other forms of autism, eggsp. complex syndromic forms, because those have autism-like traits caused by mechanisms other than those that cause most subgroups of hfa. I learned recently at science conference that increase in de novo mutations is only associated with autism with intellectual disability which includes syndromic forms, and there is no increase in hfa vs. nt.

I agree. The theory of misdiagnosing females cant account for why the females are missing among HFA kids??

Here's a study:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 101332.htm

I am not saying that it's necessarily 1:1. I think Lorna Wing has a fairly educated guess on what the actual (not 4:1) ratio, as well as an informed opinion on why those diagnoses are not happening (the video was posted here some time back, but I do not recall where it is right now - it's not that study, though).

But the sexism is real. It's not made up, and it has a significant impact on how women and girls are treated and diagnosed by medical professionals. It is probably not the only factor, but I do not think it is really possible to make authoritative claims on how many girls vs boys are autistic as long as that factor is not addressed.

It can to at least some extent, and there is actual empirical data on the misdiagnosing, which I've now linked twice in the thread.

The empirical paper you linked to is a student PhD thesis with possible external validity flaws. The author states based on their data that when girls with symptoms of autism or ADHD seek professional medical help, their problems are often played down or misinterpreted, The author goes on to say that 50% of girls diagnosed with ADHD had autism or autism like traits. I'm convinced they are talking about Aspergers and not non-verbal female children

I've been to plenty of schools, psych clinics and speech therapists in Melbourne and I can tell you the therapists and teachers don;t see any autistic non-verbal or non-communicative girls. I'm sure they are out there, it's just that girls with autism here are all classified as Aspies. I've noticed this, and find it very peculiar. Your study does not bring any light on this matter.