Ellie Wilson

This is part of what contributes to that huge diversity of presentation of autism is how it tends to co-occur with other types of disabilities.

You named all the ones that are important, but let's just pick them apart for a second.

About a third of autistic people also qualify for what's called an intellectual disability.

Intellectual disability is essentially a function of how someone performs on an IQ test.

Perhaps in another episode or over a couple of beers, I'd happily tell you what the complications are with that issue.

let's say about a third of people have a co-occurring intellectual disability.

That means two-thirds don't, for what it's worth.

Now, you also mentioned epilepsy.

About a third of autistic people, though not necessarily the same third as those with ID, also have a history of seizures or epilepsy that also affects sort of their various health outcomes and their needs.

But certainly, the one that you mentioned first, I think, is the most important.

What we understand more and more as years go on about autistic people is that, especially as they age, become teenagers, young and older adults, we know that

that they have a very high prevalence of anxiety, depression, and a couple of other key disorders.

The other big one is ADHD.

ADHD and autism can occur together.

That's something that medical providers didn't use to understand.

They used to think you kind of had to be one or the other.

And in fact, you can have both.

And so, you know, this is just the first layer of the onion, but this is part of why we see so much difference between autistic people.

It's part of what explains the phenomenon of like, I know two autistic people, but they're totally different from each other.

Why do they have the same label?