Missed diagnosis or misdiagnosis? Girls and women on the autism spectrum

There is increasing awareness that we are missing girls and women on the autism spectrum and the assumption that many more boys and men have autism or Asperger syndrome is being challenged. There is a need to consider the extent to which females on the autism spectrum present differently from males and to explore whether they have different needs. This would then have implications for the systems, instruments and processes used for diagnosis and for the types of interventions offered. This paper makes a start at investigating this whole area and gives some evidence on the potential differences between males and females with autism. Suggestions are made on how diagnostic questions might be altered to identify some females on the autism spectrum who might otherwise be missed. The Editors of GAP welcome other papers on this topic.