How many people know they're autistic, so far.
These are the studies from various countries and teams.
England & Scotland data taken from the official school records.
The problem is, not everyone knows they're autistic.
The tests & assessments tend to find white males/

/because that's what they were expecting to find, many decades ago.
It simply never occurred to people that autism might 'look' different in e.g. females, BAME communities, older people, males who don't present in typically male ways, etc./
I suspect we are nowhere near finding most of the females.
Why do I suspect this? From conversation with diagnostic professionals who are updating their info and having 'oh heck!' moments.
From parents struggling to get their daughters diagnosed, whereas the son was easy/
/...from the number of autistic females I've encountered over the last decades who had gone 'under the radar' for so many years until someone finally had that 'aha!' moment.
And so many with identical presentations who are still struggling to get diagnosed/
Being clear that many diagnostic teams are fabulous.
It's simply a reality that the tools they were given were designed to pick white men.
Let's look at some examples:/
Do they make 'unusual' eye contact?
This can be cultural. It might be immensely rude to look an adult in the eye, in some cultures.

What about their hobbies? Oh she plays with dolls? Great.
Oh, he plays with toy trains? Autism!
Even though the 50 dolls are lined up/
Are they a female that shows sudden changes in mood/angry anxiety? Personality disorder! MH!
Are they a male that shows sudden changes in mood/angry anxiety? Autism!
Repeating, many diagnostic teams are good.../
So many females get to adult years before being considered for diagnosis, dragging behind them a list as long as your arm of Things They Didn't Actually Have But Got Diagnosed With before someone said 'oh...ah...!'
So, when I see prevalence statistics saying it's 4:1 boys/
I am rather suspicious of that number. I really don't think it is.
I think it's far closer.
Colleagues from BAME communities talk of societal and cultural barriers to even thinking about getting a child diagnosed, also/
So...if Scotland has 1 in 40 school pupils who are autistic so far, we can make a good guess that there are more.
And my estimates of 1 in 30 aren't too far wrong.
There's no reason why England should be different; England's rate was the same as Scotland in 2010/
We have various charities still claiming it's 1 in 100, based on data from 10 years ago.
It ignores the data from our own Schools statistical teams.
It's really weird to keep using that figure.
When are we going to stop?

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The outrage is not that she fit better. The outrage is that she stated very firmly on national television with no caveat, that there are no conditions not improved by exercise. Many people with viral sequelae have been saying for years that exercise has made them more disabled 1/


And the new draft NICE guidelines for ME/CFS which often has a viral onset specifically say that ME/CFS patients shouldn't do graded exercise. Clare is fully aware of this but still made a sweeping and very firm statement that all conditions are improved by exercise. This 2/

was an active dismissal of the lived experience of hundreds of thousands of patients with viral sequelae. Yes, exercise does help so many conditions. Yes, a very small number of people with an ME/CFS diagnosis are helped by exercise. But the vast majority of people with ME, a 3/

a quintessential post-viral condition, are made worse by exercise. Many have been left wheelchair dependent of bedbound by graded exercise therapy when they could walk before. To dismiss the lived experience of these patients with such a sweeping statement is unethical and 4/

unsafe. Clare has every right to her lived experience. But she can't, and you can't justifiably speak out on favour of listening to lived experience but cherry pick the lived experiences you are going to listen to. Why are the lived experiences of most people with ME dismissed?

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This is NONSENSE. The people who take photos with their books on instagram are known to be voracious readers who graciously take time to review books and recommend them to their followers. Part of their medium is to take elaborate, beautiful photos of books. Die mad, Guardian.


THEY DO READ THEM, YOU JUDGY, RACOON-PICKED TRASH BIN


If you come for Bookstagram, i will fight you.

In appreciation, here are some of my favourite bookstagrams of my books: (photos by lit_nerd37, mybookacademy, bookswrotemystory, and scorpio_books)