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The Challenging Journey to Female Autism Diagnosis

Many autistic women are not diagnosed until adulthood, often following a series of wrong diagnoses, burnout, and sometimes suicide attempts.

5 min readDec 7, 2020

Many autism experts agree that the majority of autistic women are not diagnosed until adulthood. Many may be missing diagnosis altogether. | Photo by Eutah Mizushima on Unsplash

The materials used to diagnose autism are biased towards male presentations of autism. This means that autistic males are far more likely to receive an autism diagnosis than autistic females.

Undiagnosed autistic females are more likely to be described as highly sensitive, shy, depressed, or diagnosed with conditions such as borderline personality disorder (BPD), bipolar disorder, and other mental health conditions.

Autism is not a mental health condition

Autism is a genetic neurodevelopmental difference. Many autistic people experience mental health conditions, either as a part of being autistic or because of the difficulties autistic people experience growing up and surviving in a world that is often hostile to autistic bodies and brains.

Why are so many autistic women not being diagnosed?

Autism scholarship is inherently biased and many healthcare practitioners are not trained to recognize autism in females.

As someone who has felt fundamentally different in a way I could never previously point out, discovering I am on the spectrum has been a huge revelation to me. It never occurred to me that I could be autistic until I learned more about how it…

I loved reading this. I completely identify with this information and feel validated. The more articles like this I read, the more I have hope for future generations of autistic girls. We couldn’t do better for our own young selves, but we can do better for autistic girls today!