There's also an overlap of symptoms between various disorders like ADHD and OCD that can complicate an autism diagnosis due to difficulties with nonverbal social cues or executive functions like attention span, working memory and problem-solving.
“If your life has always felt like it was in chaos and you don’t feel comfortable and you don’t feel like you thrive and you just feel like you’re constantly surviving and going from one thing to the next, what you got to lose?” Nelson said.
Common signs of autism include trouble with social communication and a fixation on certain routines or topics — Nelson says “people have become my special interest now” — and may go unnoticed during someone’s childhood.
But to meet the diagnostic definition of autism, the symptoms must cause significant impairment, said Dr. Arthur Westover, a psychiatrist who specializes in autism at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.
Symptoms present differently for everyone, and many of the traits are common for people without autism, like enjoying routines or enjoying going down rabbit holes of information.
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