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

[louiseaaa]

Just that...

Anorexia so far, but the parallels with ROGD are there to see

"Will Mandy, a leading autism researcher, from University College London, said part of the issue was that women and girls were much less likely than men to be recognised as having autism in the first place.

And he believes that the "high levels of stress and anxiety" caused by the condition going undiagnosed in childhood and adolescence can contribute to people experiencing severe mental health conditions, such as eating disorders."

Link here : www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-47359416

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.

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.

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'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.

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.

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.

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

Yes, there is.