Dr. Rachel Moseley

It's really hard to challenge that, but I think it's really important that in public discourse about autism, figures who are authorities, who have a responsibility for responsible reporting, they need to talk about autism very differently in a humane, non-stigmatising way.

Yes, indeed.

Actually, the most common misdiagnosis we hear about is personality disorder, especially what's called borderline personality disorder or emotionally unstated personality disorder.

And essentially, that is often a diagnosis given to ADHDers and autistic people

you'll show suicidal behaviors or self-harm.

So basically, if you're very dysregulated, if you're having suicidal thoughts or self-harming, you're often given that label, even if you're actually neurodivergent.

Oh, if we had the answer, everything would be changed.

It's super difficult.

I think things are improving.

We are seeing new generations of clinicians, mental health professionals who have a better understanding.

And it's really important.

As I say, authority, people and figures in places of responsibility and authority, there's some really terribly, dreadfully harmful rhetoric, and it's just so harmful.

And it's very, very hard for us to move forward and progress towards this neuroaffirmative perspective when we have the kind of trumpeting of this kind of cure narrative.

So there's a lot of misunderstandings out there.

But I think a really problematic one is that quite often we hear clinicians kind of confuse autism and mental illness.

So they will think that being anxious or having anxiety or depression is just a natural part of being autistic and hence you don't need to treat it.

And that is terribly, terribly wrong.

What we know from research is that mental illness in autistic people is complex.

There's genetic stuff going on, but a lot of it is about trauma.

And that tells us that autistic people don't need to have mental illnesses.