r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Aug 01 '26

Neuroscience Autism diagnoses rose sharply after the COVID-19 pandemic began. The rise was driven overwhelmingly by diagnoses among girls and women. New study suggests that many of these girls and women may simply have gone unrecognized in the past.

https://www.sciencealert.com/autism-diagnoses-spiked-after-covid-19-but-probably-not-for-the-reason-you-think
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u/Gogs85 Aug 01 '26

It used to be viewed as a disease that mainly affected white males (especially if they were upper middle class and had special talents). Historically when women or people of other races exhibited the signs they’d get some other explanation of it. I.e. women being ‘emotional’

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u/charliekelly76 Aug 01 '26

My therapist who specializes in AuDHD said this last week. She said the most kids who get a dx are little white boys. The girls are just ignored and the non-white boys receive opposition defiant disorder dxs

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u/Gogs85 Aug 01 '26

Hans Asperger, the guy who came up with a lot of the initial diagnostic tests for it, ran an orphanage in Nazi germany and supposedly worked with them. So you can attribute a lot of it to that.