In a lot of posts from users in the US, I see people mentioning being on a spectrum and being functional autistic. How is that diagnosed and what it is? I am asking because in my country autism diagnosis is given to people who are unable to properly function on their own, and in some posts I see that the symptoms some describe are e.g. “not caring about what people say” , “getting distracted easily” etc,.
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Autism is a very broad category. [Here’s](https://icd.who.int/browse11/l-m/en#/http%3a%2f%2fid.who.int%2ficd%2fentity%2f437815624) a description
Functioning labels (high functioning autism (HFA) and low functioning autism (LFA)) are outdated terms that were used to describe autistic people with a speech delay but without an intellectual disability (HFA) or with a speech delay and with an intellectual disability (LFA). For autism without a speech delay (and without an intellectual disability), the diagnosis Asperger Syndrome (AS) or Asperger’s Disorder was used.
Technically, neither LFA nor HFA were ever official diagnostic terms. They shared the diagnosis “Infantile Autism” or “Autistic Disorder”. Today, all of autism falls under “Autism Spectrum Disorder”, with specifiers to clarify if there are any cognitive or speech impairments present. But the transition is happening very slowly and many (most?) countries don’t officially use the new criteria yet. But if, in your country, really only people who can’t function on their own at all get diagnosed, that means autism is extremely underdiagnosed (a common problem probably everywhere in the world, but in some places it’s worse than in others)
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