Understanding Autism for Dummies

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We want to reduce the health and care inequalities that autistic people face throughout their lives, and to show that autistic people are living healthier and longer lives. In addition, we want to have made significant progress on improving early identification, reducing diagnosis waiting times and improving diagnostic pathways for children and adults, so autistic people can access a timely diagnosis and the support they may need across their lives. Building the right support in the community and supporting people in inpatient care Use a list or day planner. If remembering appointments and other responsibilities is a challenge, use a paper planner or an organizational app for your cell phone. You could also use anything from spreadsheets to a whiteboard to help you organize daily tasks. Call the Autism Society National Helpline at 1-800-328-8476, find support groups at the Asperger/Autism Network (AANE), or find vocational rehabilitation services near you. Some people find that anxiety and depression go hand in hand with symptoms of ASD. For example, difficulty relating to others can lead to feelings of anxiety. Increased anxiety can, in turn, make it even harder to communicate. You might even feel so flustered that you can't form sentences. Since the last autism strategy was published, new challenges have also emerged for autistic people, as has our understanding of the barriers people face across their lives. We have seen the number of people identified as being autistic in inpatient mental health services increase, and now know more about the scale of the life expectancy gap for autistic people, which is we know is approximately 16 years compared to the general population.

Autism: Learn the Signs and How to Live with a Diagnosis Adult Autism: Learn the Signs and How to Live with a Diagnosis

Support groups can be a great way to meet people who have had similar life experiences. You might meet lifelong friends and become an important part of someone else’s social support network. Over the last few years, we have seen many public sector services and organisations taking steps to become autism-inclusive, with many becoming autism-accredited or taking other steps to improve how they support autistic people. However, we know that many autistic people still feel excluded from public spaces and civil society because these can be overwhelming, busy or noisy and because staff or the public may react negatively to autistic people’s behaviour or support needs. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic autistic adults reported higher levels of loneliness than the general public. Evidence from the LSE research we commissioned into the impact of the pandemic has shown that autistic people may be at risk of further exclusion, due to the challenges many have faced with social distancing restrictions and changes to support networks. This has affected their confidence with getting out into their communities. The National Autistic Society Left Stranded report found that compared to the general public, autistic people were seven times more likely to be chronically lonely during June and July 2020. continue to promote employment support programmes, including Access to Work and IPES to autistic people who are at least a year away from work As we move out of COVID-19 restrictions, we will also continue our efforts to make Jobcentres more autism-inclusive, to ensure autistic people receive the help they need to move into employment or employment programmes. More broadly, supporting disabled people, including autistic people, will be a focus of our approach to labour market recovery as we come out of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is vital in protecting autistic people from being disproportionately affected and preventing the employment gap from widening further in a challenging context. Improving employment support and the welfare systemIt's something you're born with. Signs of autism might be noticed when you're very young, or not until you're older. Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount. The book is written primarily for parents and professionals new to the field but, unlike the other books I’ve mentioned, it covers a very broad landscape. Everything from some of the biomedical and physical issues you see in autism to how we understand autism. He asks: how do we understand the diagnosis? How can we help people with autism learn? How can we help them with their social skills? Then he goes into adulthood and asks what is it like for adults living with autism. What happens after you leave school? What happens in romantic relationships? By 2026, we will have made headway on reducing the health and care inequalities autistic people face, and show that autistic people are living healthier lives. This includes evidencing that we are making progress on improving autistic people’s health outcomes and reducing the gap in life expectancy. Men are about four times as likely to be diagnosed with ASD than women. Some researchers theorize this may be because women in general are better at imitating socially acceptable behavior. Unlike children with ASD, adults with autism (even when undiagnosed) have had plenty of time to practice their social skills. Women especially often learn to “mask” certain behaviors that seem to draw the attention of other people.

Autism Spectrum Disorder? | CDC What is Autism Spectrum Disorder? | CDC

We want education settings to provide better and more inclusive support to autistic children and young people so that autistic people are better able to achieve their potential. We want more teachers and educational staff to understand the specific needs of their autistic pupils, ensuring that more school placements can be sustained. We also want to demonstrate that more autistic children have had their needs identified early on and that they are having positive experiences in education settings. Autistic people may find socialising and social interactions difficult. There are lots of unwritten rules that we use when talking to someone else, and these rules aren’t always the same. Autistic people can find these rules difficult to remember or confusing because they aren't always applied in the same way. This means autistic people often find it difficult to understand other people’s intentions and express their own feelings. continue to ensure that through the Disability Confident Scheme, we promote the skills and abilities of autistic people, and signpost employers to resources on supporting autistic people It’s also possible that women with ASD have repetitive behavior tendencies and narrow interests that aren’t seen as unusual. For example, a woman with ASD who feels the urge to neatly organize dishes or who is only fascinated with music theory may pass as “neurotypical”. Diagnosis and causes

Diagnosis

In addition, we resumed our ‘it’s everyone’s journey’ campaign on the 25 May 2021, which is aimed at helping the public to be more mindful of passengers, including those who are autistic, and the challenges they may face when using transport. As we move out of restrictions, we will support disabled people returning to the transport system by ensuring that rules around face covering exemptions are well understood, that the decision to carry an exemptions card is entirely a matter for individuals, and that people should be supported not to feel uncomfortable or intimidated where they do not wear a face covering, or are unable to socially distance. Everyone has their own interests. But adults with ASD often focus on one or two subjects that they find highly fascinating. You may have an encyclopedic knowledge of a historical event or movie series, for example.

Guide To Autism Spectrum Disorder ASD 101: Beginner’s Guide To Autism Spectrum Disorder

To succeed in improving autistic people’s and their families’ lives we will need to work collaboratively to implement these actions across national and local government, the NHS, the education system, the criminal and youth justice systems, and with autistic people and their families. We will refresh our national governance arrangements to ensure government, delivery partners and other organisations responsible for implementing actions set out in the implementation plan are held to account on progress. 2. Our roadmap for the next 5 years How we will make our vision a reality Some autistic people have little or no speech or delayed language development – or they communicate in a different way - using pictures, sounds or gestures for example. This doesn't mean that they don't understand what is being said, often an autistic person can take in more information than they give out, this creates a disparity in what someone understands and what they communicate.Autistic people can find it harder to understand abstract concepts. For example, they can struggle to understand another person’s point of view – or if they know it in theory, they may still struggle to imagine what it might be. If you feel isolated or feel like your neurotypical friends don’t “get” you, it can help to join a support group for adults with ASD. These may take place either online or in-person with groups of varying sizes. continue our work to ensure our Jobcentre network is welcoming and supportive to autistic customers, developing and testing new approaches through our Health Model Offices To monitor our progress on reducing waiting times, we will continue to collect and improve data on autism diagnosis waiting times and identify areas that are not meeting the NICE-recommended 13 weeks between referral and assessment ( Autism waiting times statistics, NHS Digital). In addition, we are developing an action plan with NHSE/I and NHS Digital to enable us to report on diagnostic waiting times for children and young people. Current data on diagnostic waiting times is based on reporting of diagnoses by mental health organisations, while community services where children are usually diagnosed a We also want to build on our success in increasing the representation of disabled people, including autistic people, in apprenticeships – ensuring that disabled people not only access apprenticeships, but go on to succeed in their apprenticeship. We will do this by engaging with employers, providers, apprentices and the disability sector to determine what works and how best to disseminate this. Continuing to support autistic children and young people during the COVID-19 pandemic

What is autism? | Ambitious about Autism What is autism? | Ambitious about Autism

Autism has a wide range of symptoms, even if you narrow the scope down to “high functioning” autism. Autism symptoms in adults tend to be most prominent in your communication skills, interests, emotional and behavioral patterns, and sensitivity to stimuli, such as noise and touch. Problems with communication All rights reserved. HELPGUIDE.ORG INTERNATIONAL is a tax-exempt 501(c)3 organization (ID #45-4510670). Our content does not constitute a medical or psychological consultation. See a certified medical or mental health professional for diagnosis. Learn more. Although we’ve come so far over the last decade, there must be no limit to the ambitions of autistic people; they should have the same opportunities as everyone else in society.This is one of the things that we can only try to understand by listening to people with autism. For most kids, the major issue when they’re infants is that they are dysregulated: they could be highly anxious, they could be over-stimulated. The same for adults is being incredibly angry, incredibly fearful and anxious. Under those circumstances, we cannot engage successfully with other people, we can’t learn, and we can’t process information. Some of the risk factors are well-known in the field of autism. They include sensory issues, for example, being highly sensitive to sound, touch, and taste. I mean, if you perceive sound as painful then you put all your energy into coping and you’re not as available for interacting or learning in those situations. In addition, Dame Cheryl made significant progress in improving Parliamentarians’ understanding of autism by introducing autism understanding training, which over 100 MPs have undertaken. We have both completed this training and will be encouraging other Ministers and parliamentarians to do so going forward. This is the first of the last two books I recommended—both of which are written by people on the spectrum. Stephen has written four books, including his autobiography which is called Beyond the Wall. Stephen has a doctorate in Special Education, he is a professional and a special educator and currently works part-time at Adelphi University in New York, but he is a man with autism. He really tried to be as non-opinionated as possible in Understanding Autism for Dummies, where he speaks about a number of different treatments and approaches and does not really come out in favour or against any of them. He does have strong opinions but, in this book, he intentionally wanted to present information about understanding autism from as neutral a perspective as possible. continue to recognise the specific needs of autistic people during the COVID-19 pandemic, and take appropriate action to mitigate a disproportionate impact on autistic people