What Is Autism?

What is autism? 

It is a broad range of conditions characterised by challenges with social skills, repetitive behaviours, speech and nonverbal communication.

Autism can be a weird thing to understand because it's a spectrum, you can be on one end or the over. Some people will be nonverbal or in another case, they might be a genius.

So you can't generalise autism or ASD (autism spectrum disorder) because you can have three categories: high-functioning autism and then autism or severe autism. And even within those categories, there are lots of different things people may struggle with. Most people think the autism spectrum is like a straight line and you get put in one place and that's that but, in reality, the spectrum is a circle. You could be at one point of the circle for one thing but on the opposite side for another. For example, you might feel extremely anxious and not be able to read people's body language, but you could be a hidden genius or have motor skills. In addition, people with high-functioning ASD deal with things on the circle in a different manner from people with more severe ASD.

Furthermore, you can't really describe what ASD is. Everyone has aspects of ASD, and people deal with things differently than others.

Why should you care about understanding autism?

There are 700,000 people in the UK with autism. 1 in 100 children in the UK have autism. You almost definitely know at least one person with autism and that person deserves to be understood just like every other person in the world. You can live a full life with autism.