The dots are being joined regarding Autism in Girls and mental health disorders

Is there also a link between autism and dissociation as a coping strategy?

Yes, there is.

Its baffled me, how this has not really been picked up sooner.

Quite honestly speaking, because it's not necessarily going to impact the school environment as much as a child who is very disruptive, often (not exclusively) boys.

But sadly, posters on here are just excluding other female posters by turning everything to this one topic, however tenuous. Rather ironic; excluding other women's voices.

I don't get how posters discussing what they want to discuss, is excluding other womens voices?

So glad these obvious links are being discussed. Its baffled me, how this has not really been picked up sooner.

I've always been taught through various training sessions that adhd and asd are often co-morbid (I always hate that term?!) and in my experience the approaches low stimulation highly structured teaching environments work really well for children with ADHD/ ADD. As well as sensory programmes.

It's quite possible in many cases that ASD has been missed and adhd diagnosed; I certainly have worked with children where their ASD is the lesser challenge to their day to day lives.

The psychiatrist who diagnosed my DD with autism (as an adult) told me that she visited an in patient setting for anorexics and she thought many of them could be undiagnosed autistic women. She also told me that struggling with gender was extremely common in the people she sees in her clinic.

I believe there's also a link between autism and ADD (as in, missed cases, one hiding the other etc). There was a good talk on it at FiLiA last year but damned if I can find my notebook to dig out the speaker's name.

A very long time ago I was a researcher in CAMHS. I was taught to screen out co-morbidities using a very long questionnaire with both the patient and the parents (eg, to ensure a distinct case of psychosis as opposed to hallucinations due to drug use, or damage to the brain etc). Does nobody consider symptoms that are the same but from different sources any more, or look out for overlapping issues?

I use to visit the local adolescent psych unit regularly and at any one time fully half the kids in there were anorexic. So awful to think that many of them might have been missed for ASD support that could have prevented it.

Is there also a link between autism and dissociation as a coping strategy? I have read a few things that suggest such and it fits with my general experience of MH disorders but am not so familiar with autism.

Possibly for masking and getting through situations that are traumatic, by using a detached emotionless persona or differently characteristic-ed persona eg 'bolshy', or by mimicking other people but without real understanding of the behaviours, until the person can get home to safety when the containment collapses.

Also, dissociation (and depersonalisation) sometimes taking the form of bodily detachment and othering of the child's body - not my body, 'the body etc. A way of externalising and trying to remove the problem and take back some control (but it is likely a mislocation of the real problem).

If so, to me this fits with identity issues/ disorders, and I see overlap with Annorexia, PTSD/cPTSD, some parts of Borderline Personality Disorder etc, but feel these are ignored and misdiagnosed by male biased psychiatry.

Morskie - re non-binary - in my experience, girls who identify as non-binary still seem to end up with a double mastectomy and on testosterone - it is not simply a "neutral" option - which it should be.

In my experience, similar to yours but much younger children, observations count for an awful lot. It's anecdata but everyone working daily with these young people know what's going on.

My dd is 15 and has Aspergers. She too seems to have gone down the ROGD route. She has struggled to find her "place" in Secondary school and puberty rang the death knell. We have had LONG conversations about this (after she had been watching YouTube and asked for puberty blockers) and for the moment she is being non-binary which is fine with me.

GreyRoses - either post what you want to say on here or start a new thread if you think that your post will get lost. Either way, it's definitely an interesting issue to pull apart and think about through a feminist prism

That is to Greyroses

I don't know why people feel the need to come here with the 'no debate'-type shit. Nobody is shutting down discussion of anorexia. Posters who have things to say about anorexia and autism should say them. And the OP was already quite clearly broadly constructed to include mental health conditions generally NOT only anorexia. Theres nothing stopping another thread specifically about your experiences with anorexia

Yes dd hardly eats either, she has a restricted diet anyway which is common in ASD but also she doesn't necessarily recognise the cues that she is hungry. So yesterday she ate a small bacon roll and today she has eaten the same and refused everything else offered. This may continue for a few days and then she will move on to a different food and possibly more than one meal a day.

*wanting not to be fat

I would think both anorexia and gender dysphoria are important autistic womens' issues.. not sure why somebody would have to go into a different forum to discuss. If you don't want to discuss gender dysphoria then just contribute about anorexia and also people's opinions about that? I know lots of autistic women with sensory issues relating to food are misdiagnosed anorexic, too - happened to a couple of friends of mine. They don't eat enough but it doesn't relate to wanting not to be far which is what a lot of the treatment is based around. So I fear that undiagnosed autistic girls might be receiving the wrong sort of treatment to resolve their eating problems e.g. standard anorexia treatment which misunderstands he root of the issues.

Dd 16 has autism diagnosed age 2 and ROGD I believe it's because she doesn't identify with her female peers because of the autism and so her automatic assumption is that she must be the wrong gender. It's incredibly worrying for me especially as she seems to have found a group of like minded and interestingly also ASD friends online which seems to be cementing her belief and she increasingly sees me as transphobic for refusing to countenance her beliefs.

My kid is textbook in this regard. We had no clue that she was autistic until everything started to fall apart at about aged 17. Then came depression, self harm and declaration of being transgender. The autism diagnosis came after that.

If she had been diagnosed earlier (instead of OCD, GAD etc, just "highly strung") she would have had support from us, from school, from mental health professionals etc to understand why she wasn't coping )and still isn't actually).

So it is a feminist issue - girls are being let down by a diagnostic system based on male presentation.

And the consequences are huge - anorexia, self harm, surgical alteration to "correct" your body.

(That's not to say autistic boys aren't also affected)

tenuous

35% of those referred to the travistock clinic are autistic, this is not tenuous.

Understanding how autism influences behaviours must be so important with treating anorexia.

Okay, I look forward to you post in special needs chat, as you are so desperate for that discussion.

I saw the article and found it interesting. But it really does beg the question about just how widespread is autism in girls (undiagnosed) which is then manifesting in various kinds of self harm.

I'd like to talk about women's rights too. Notably those with anorexia and autism.

Funny how every discussion on the feminist board has to be about gender nowadays. I'd like just to talk about autism in girls and anorexia in girls which are women's issues and women's rights issues.

I was so heartened by the title and the "just that" in the initial post 😔 But sadly, posters on here are just excluding other female posters by turning everything to this one topic, however tenuous. Rather ironic; excluding other women's voices.

I will have to hide this topic again so it doesn't pop up in active and get me all excited about talking about something interesting.

If you want a general talk about autism and anorexia without having a woman's rights discussion I would suggest starting a thread in the SNCHAT or Mental health sections of the site.
Feminism seems to slant towards woman's rights, funny that.