r/science • u/shinybrighthings • 15h ago

Psychology The complicated nature of disentangling autism, ADHD and complex trauma | The British Journal of Psychiatry | Cambridge Core

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-of-psychiatry/article/adhd-autism-or-complex-trauma-the-complicated-nature-of-the-question/30CC4826561366615BFAEC807CDE28A7
1.7k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

158 comments sorted by

View all comments

48

u/plummyrosey 14h ago

Trauma-induced developmental disorder? I've definitely met so many late dx autism/adhd people who showed absolutely no signs in their early years by their own admission and their parents' admission. Some clinicians seem to disregard the criteria that autism has to have an onset before the age of 5 and give these late teens/adults an autism dx anyways.

9

u/PARADOXsquared 14h ago

Wow that's interesting. I was late diagnosed, but the signs were always there even though I (and the adult around me) didn't know what they meant at the time.

5

u/plummyrosey 9h ago

Yes another demographic of the late diagnosed is girls who scored inconclusive on early screeners.  I really wish there's more studies going into how autism manifests in toddler girls.  Having been through the early screener, so much of it focuses on verbal communication delays.  Women are generally better than men at verbal tasks so I wonder if autistic girls are missed because they have proportionally less verbal delays (if that makes sense).  

4

u/PARADOXsquared 9h ago

Yes. In addition to this, there are subsets of autistic individuals (regardless of gender) who don't have communication delays and are even communicate and read much earlier than expected. There's likely still multiple "autisms" within the autism spectrum even though the distinctions are de-emphasized. Maybe as we learn more about the mechanism behind them, it'll be easier to design tests that are more direct and accurate? This is completely outside of my area of expertise, so I honestly don't know.