These past couple of weeks, I have been thinking about the diagnostic criteria of autism that basically says "Does it interfere with the individual's life?" -- with the answer "no" being "then there's no autism". As I have reflected on this, I have concluded that I wouldn't have "had" autism so long as I was in a school (I have a PhD in math), but trying to make my way through employment (as a software engineer) has been a cycle of burnouts, and layoffs, and lengthy unemployments where I *sometimes* did well, but not really -- and up until a few months ago, I wouldn't have had any reason to connect my burnouts and social anxiety with autism, although it's now plain to me what the condition entails. Thus, when I think about this particular study, I cannot help but wonder: (1) How many of these kids who "no longer" had autism, will have it again in the future, when they encounter new stresses? Wouldn't it make sense to keep an eye on them throughout their lives, so that they can be prepared to navigate the adverse effects when they come back? (2) How many of these kids merely learned how to "mask" so that they can fit in? In looking back on my life, I have come to realize that my "burnouts" were most likely "autistic burnouts" -- and I suspect that if I could have learned how to manage my life so I could avoid these burnouts, they wouldn't have happened. (3) How many of these kids were merely "slow developers" rather than autistic, because our school systems are set up to treat every individual as a cog that's supposed to hit every milestone of their lives at the exact same time as every other child, supposing that any child that has delays has some sort of "disorder", rather than promote each child's intellectual growth when they are ready for it?

I’ve never been diagnosed with ASD but i was diagnosed with ADHD and Depression/Anxiety in my 20s. I’ve always wondered what was wrong with me and why my life has been so difficult. Recently I’ve came to realize I may have other neurodiverse attributes that have existed under the radar because of masking behaviors. Everything is beginning to make sense for the first time in my life I feel like I can (at least to myself) explain why I have acted the way I have and made the choices I’ve made. I’ve also v struggled with substance abuse since I was 16 and have used drugs to feel ‘normal’ I believe what society needs is more experts on ASD and the links to ADHD and substance abuse. I wouldn’t be surprised if a majority of addicts were actually neurodiverse and only use drugs to suppress their minds and emotions.

You can't become non-autistic... You can learn to compensate and avoid issues in so many ways (I'm assuming especially is the IQ is higher to begin with). I'm 29 and still Autistic, even if most people who know me wouldn't know without me telling them. I'm sure if masked well enough and stretched the truth I could easily "fail" an autism assessment today.

What we may be seeing in those cases where someone supposedly "grows out" of autism are problems with the reliability of diagnosis. As autism is a lifelong condition this is impossible so those individuals were either wrongly diagnosed as autistic in the past or wrongly non-diagnosed in the present. It is true that symptoms and difficulties may ease or intensify given life conditions. Some autistic people will become more settled and accepted at school and seem to cope better but then struggle badly in employment. Some may cope better in certain jobs or if they have supportive others around them. However in all these cases of "improvement" the autism is still there, the context has changed.

This was a nicely delivered summary of a (probably) arcanely-worded scientific study. Thanks for boiling it down for us regular folks.

after seeing these goofy ass comments im convinced im not autistic

i might have been autistic when i was younger but now im just psychotic

10 years ago. Still somewhat relevant to the modern world

Or they were just masking

Thanks for sharing this. Can you please also share the link of this paper/study? I am really interested in this. My three years old was diagnosed with mild Autism last week!

I'm 57 and still autistic

Is there cure let me know

it's interesting this video is from 11 years ago and we are actually seeing alot of what happens after: burnout, extreme burnout from trying hard to fit in and adapt to their surroundings. Their surroundings usually not being aware of it until it's too late, because they have learned to hide their difficulties to not stand out too much in society and to be able to be independent, treated fairly(as much as possible) and to be able to get a job, friends etc. Not saying that every autistic person would go into burnout(i can not know that)...and it's not necessarily connected to it if they have a diagnosis or not. what baffles me, is that we haven't adapted the diagnosis process yet similarly to how we treat some other conditions to match reality more. Yes, behaviour wise autistic people change, they are human, they grow up like everyone else does, everyone changes, everyone matures. Even internally, BUT current diagnostics don't usually take into account autistics internally...it's often based on how they are perceived, which leads to heavy biases in diagnostics, because most autistic behaviours are for one human behaviours, just with some more exxaggerated, but also the environment can perceive autistic behaviour differently. As an extreme example: an abusive parent is probably not going to give the same accounts of a childs behaviour as a healthy parent....but even somewhat healthy parents could be biased towards seeing no faults in their child....or another example the parent might be autistic themselves and not seeing anything wrong with their child (this happens surprisingly often). (of course one would hope a good psychatrist would know how to ask questions the right way, but they might not even be aware of the bias the parent has or any other person they might interview) Then there is also the pathology of autism...autism is diagnosed based on difficulties, even though we know that some of the difficulties can be helped with accommodations (or masked) which would then suddenly influence diagnosis even though the brain wiring is still different? does not really make sense.

And did the study discuss how the qualities associated with those who "outgrew" autism sound a lot like qualities of people who might be quite good at masking...?

Legend👍🍻

No it means they dont show symptoms... thats a good thing... doesn't mean its gone..

Well said. One of the things I see on the internet is people on the spectrum can "mask" their autistic traits. This goes against the definition of autism entirely because autistic people have problems recognizing facial expressions, body language, and in some instances have a bizarre way of speaking. Autistic people cannot read other peoples facial expressions or "act" normal because they are autistic! I'm so glad someone is speaking out on the blatant over diagnosis of autism.

So it was a misdiagnosis. There are many diagnoses that have similar symptoms as autism.

I'm trying to move off the spectrum too

Can you outgrow this for life is there a cure

I regret watching this video......this was horrible!

I guess I was wrongly diagnosed with Autism when I was younger. I was too young to understand what was going on as I was told I was only 9 at that time but truth be told I was a very shy girl when I was younger and that was likely why I was wrongly diagnosed and now I'm wrongly labeled as "autistic" which is a straight up insult .. it's an insult to me to be put into that category and it's not true.

Wow! This is ridiculous and very insulting to me as an autistic person.

Those kids were just brats who finally got into the real world and adapted. You cannot outgrow autism. They just needed to have influence from someone other than their parents.