Why the diagnosis and treatment of autism for adults is often overlooked
Diagnosis and treatment of autism in adults is often overlooked. Elaine Yau traces some of the factors
Bernard Tang doesn't quite understand why his classmates picked on him all through secondary school.
"They would throw away my pencil case, hide my schoolbag and put chalk on my chair," he says.
He figures that was because they thought he was different, and he certainly has his quirks. Following the Sars outbreak in 2003, for example, he picked up a habit of frequent handwashing.
All the autistic services are for children. I have to wait years for subsidised medical treatment
"I had to make sure that my hands were not infected, so I asked to go to the washroom to wash my hands all the time. But teachers refused and said that Sars was long gone."
When he was in Form Six, a school counsellor referred him to a psychiatrist. The next year, 2008, he was diagnosed as having Asperger's syndrome (ASD), one of a group of autism spectrum disorders characterised by social impairment, repetitive behaviour and other abnormalities. Tang was 20 years old at the time.
Diagnosis and treatment of autism disorder for adults have been overlooked because the bulk of resources are allocated to providing support to children, psychologists say.
Eria Li Ping-ying, a researcher on autism spectrum disorders at the graduate school of the Hong Kong Institute of Education, says people diagnosed in adulthood tend to be high-functioning individuals whose symptoms don't severely affect their everyday life.