male to female ASD ratio: 15 to 1???

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Even if you are an ASD woman who is not good at imitating others in order to blend in, it is highly unlikely that you will get diagnosed...it still seems rather unheard of among mainstream doctors and whatnots..unless you go out of your way to seek out a diagnosis..It took me years before I was able to functionally seek treatment for ADD due to financial restrictions and lack of other resources...if you are poor and/or don't have a support network, assistance is not magically going to find you...and if you go to a budget psych. doc ( I went to a sliding scale doc at the Baylor college of medicine)...he is likely to be more particularly ignorant than average...(speaking from experience..)
All anyone seems willing to acknowledge is anxiety and depression..at least the Baylor doc acknowledged the likelihood of PDD-NOS...
That was nice of him, I guess...

I am a woman with a diagnosis - but I had to actively seek it out as an adult. But then when I was a kid, no one had heard of Aspergers anyway. But definitely Aspergers does often present differently in woman than in men. As someone else said, we tend to internalise difficulties more, and a quiet girl isn't seen as a problem. Sadly, in schools, the teachers push more for support with the kids who are acting out and causing difficulties for them. If you're not creating a problem for the teachers, they're less likely to be concerned about any problem you may have. And if you do well academically, they think you're fine.

I think it's close to 1:1, but the gender stereotypes make everything sound lop-sided.

Based on the aspies/auties whom I know in person, the ratio appears to be around 2:1, but my sample size is fairly small (n = approx. 30).

Tony Attwood has a good youtube interview on this: http://www.youtube.com/user/autismhango ... BOTkvM1mJw

(It's part of the AutismHangout series of videos, a very good series if you haven't come across it).

Attwood estimates the ratio to be 2:1 but admits that's it's commonly estimated at 4:1 because females are underdiagnosed. I think the reasons why females are underdiagnosed is interesting, it boils down the different ways that males and females deal with aspergers: http://www.help4aspergers.com/pb/wp_a58 ... d4f6a.html [From 'Aspergirls'].

good video, thank you. i'm now watching the one with Rudy Simone who immediately says that women have the same problems with social, romantic, and employment relationships as men but they have an additional hurdle: getting diagnosed. (not news to us, but it is nice to see professionals in the field making such an observation)

EDIT: also, i didn't realize Rudy Simone was herself on the spectrum until watching this video. that's great - i wish everyone studying autism was on the spectrum.

Last edited by katzefrau on 19 Jun 2010, 4:43 am, edited 1 time in total.

The ratio is not 15:1. It's more like 2:30.

absolutely.


* * *

update.

i sent him an email with a link to the Tony Attwood interview that Wuffles posted and i said i thought the ratio was closer to 2:1 or 3:1, although i agreed that many girls and women were not getting diagnosed and i theorized why.

i was hoping to open up a dialogue about the issue - naively, i assume someone in the field would be interested in learning more about such a topic.

his response:
"best of luck"