Making Sense of ASD

While researching notable autistic people last year for a presentation that was running on the ground floor atrium area of Augustine House, as part of Autism Awareness Week (AAW), I noticed something of a common theme. Many of the celebrities I was finding on lists of famous figures with ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) had been diagnosed not as children but as adults – whether they had been encouraged by their partners and families to seek the opinions of medical experts, or had read about symptoms that resonated with their own experiences and behaviours and gone on to self-diagnose, it seemed clear that for many of these people, the lack of awareness and understanding of autism during their childhood and adolescence had meant that only as recognition of autism developed during their lifetime had they come to realise that ASD is a fundamental part of their identity.