My uncle is almost certainly autistically and has never been diagnosed. He still lives with his elderly mother. She manages his finances and makes sure he clothes himself etc etc. He managed to get through school and he had a job briefly. But thats it. He and his mother refuse to address this. This means the burden is likely to fall on my father in an ugly mess when my step grandmother dies.
There was a thread earlier this week regarding adults who can't live independently who live with elderly parents and there were a number of posters who said how this affected their family in the absence of a diagnosis. It make the whole process of getting adequate support a lot harder.
There are also implications for certain situations - such as being arrested or going into hospital.
A lot of autistic people might generally be able to 'cope' to a point, and to an outsider look like they are able to function and don't need additional support but there a lot of situations where this is not the case. Even for 'mild' autism.
There is a massive range of needs. But the key point is they remain needs.
A failure to support those needs has massive implications for society as a whole.
Absolutely this, @RedToothBrush . Once upon a time stuffed away in asylums in obvious cases, and the rest left to flounder/ be homeless/ commit suicide/ rely immensely on family to fill the gaps in private, at immense cost to them.
My father, now 78, is very obviously autistic. He has been very successful academically and financially but has pretty much no relationship with any of his children, ruined his life with alcoholism attempting to cope with its demands and now has a wife who controls and manipulates him to the extent that she has convinced him not to have cancer treatment so he will likely be dead in the next year or two.
My brother is also incapable of family or emotional relationships due to the trauma or living through school and early life with no diagnosis. Again extremely intelligent, now very successful financially but cut off from everyone, living a very insular life on the other side of the world and trying to recover from alcoholism from self-medicating.
As for me, much as the recent studies that weren't available when I was an undiagnosed child living in hell state, I was subjected to all of the vastly heightened risks they set out for autistic girls with no learning disabilities, who can mask and whose support needs are therefore dismissed and ignored. I was sexually abused by my step father, made homeless by my mother and him at 16, obviously my father and his controlling wife were unwilling to help, left to fend for myself.
I excelled academically, all A stars and As despite all of this, but had no help from police or social services even when covered in bruises because I was articulate and seemed "fine". Once left alone to fend for myself and pay rent while still school aged and live in a slum I was raped several times, attacked, spiralled into drug abuse and alcoholism myself for a time. A GP sent me back to my flat where I lived alone as a minor with prescription medication never licensed to give to under 18s that has subsequently been banned entirely because it caused suicides. I tried to kill myself multiple times.
I have dug my way out, very slowly. I worked and studied and worked and studied and now I earn a six figure income because at least I still had my academic abilities to get me out of this situation. But the heightened risks that autistic people are faced with, the discrimination, and the effects of this cause lifelong harm.
My mental health will never, ever recover from what happened to me and how I was treated as a child, even with long-belated trauma therapy, not just by my "parents" but by school staff, social workers, etc. There was no support at all. Being intelligent and not wearing nappies and able to speak didn't save me from harm. My support needs had nothing to do with my academic abilities and my support needs were ignored.
I am doing everything and anything to fight this discrimination against very vulnerable autistic people, for my own children and others hence comments like the disgusting ones on this thread will be called out by me every time I see them. I am lucky I am alive at all, and I do everything in my power to ensure children like I was, children like my daughter, do not have their vulnerabilities and support needs minimised or ignored just because they are intelligent and can speak. The latter has no bearing on the former and I won't sit here and listen to the kind of horrific comments we've seen here, yet again, trying to minimise the needs of very vulnerable children because their vulnerabilities aren't so overtly obvious.
Guess what? The studies show that this makes them even more at risk, because nobody thinks they need any help until it's too late.
I am lucky I did not die, on several occasions. My own children obviously won't be subjected to abuse in their home as I was, or being homeless as teenagers. They are protected and loved beyond belief. But I also won't let them be subjected to the abusive and discriminators behaviour I endured from social workers, school staff or random members of the public, either. No matter what love and security I provide it will not be enough to mitigate the impact on them if they are continually subjected to damaging and discriminatory behaviour even at school: a place whose sole purpose is to help children to thrive.
Perhaps those so certain of their "opinions" about such things should realise that they know nothing of the life experiences of the many different people with what they disparagingly want to call "mild autism" and should keep their "opinions" to themselves.