Barry Baines

And I, you know, I will weigh in a little bit here to kind of in partnership with Ellie here.

You know, one of the things that's most interesting to me is, number one, the vast majority of people have excellent executive function.

They function very well.

They have their routines and it works well.

And, you know, Stan, it's more that the comorbidities of things like

anxiety, depression, ADHD, those kinds of things can effectively unmask as it were, or the unlay, you know, unlayering someone that maybe didn't carry that label of being autistic, but because of this comorbidity it upset a lot of their routines and things that they either

had under excellent control.

And I mean, you know, like I said, like just about everybody has behaviors that are, that are strange, you know, in a, in a way, I mean, that's part of, part of being human.

Um, and so especially later in adolescence, of course, again, is another stressful thing, not to mention all the hormonal changes that people go through.

And these things can kind of unmask, uh, someone who either, um,

function very well, or they may have been aware, but also there are people that try to hide that they have autism.

And again, it's sort of that unmasking effect of these mental health issues.

The other quick two points I wanted to make is there's not a medication to give somebody to make their autism better, okay?

And yet their comorbidities can be more effectively managed, right?

Whether it's ADHD, depression, anxiety, those things, you know, again, our last show, Ellie, was on medication management.

So we were saying, well, should we just medicate?

But the thing is, what's important is that if people have those comorbidities and they are on some medication,

That doesn't mean you're not treating their autism, but in the broader picture,

The other piece, I just talked with colleagues of mine.

I'm a family physician by training.