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It also means that we ourselves may not know which disorder we have, which can be crippling. Hundreds of thousands of people aren't diagnosed until late in life, if we're diagnosed at all, because autism is invisible and makes it hard to express how we feel to friends, family and doctors.Not knowing why we behave the way we do, when we behave so unusually compared to everyone else, can sometimes be devastating to our mental health and too often leads to varying states of sadness, loneliness, apathy and depression.The stats are bleak, upsetting and damning. According to Povey, "A shocking 63 percent of children and young people with autism we surveyed in 2012 told us they had experienced bullying at school." Other stats provided by the National Autistic Society state that one in five autistic children at school have been excluded, only 15 percent of autistic adults are in full-time employment, 51 percent of autistic adults have had no access to either full-time work or benefits.Another study, published in The Lancet psychiatry journal, came up with figures that stated 31 percent of the study's respondents (who had Asperger syndrome) self-reported depression and an astonishing 66 percent self-reported that they had considered suicide. Tony Attwood, the world's leading expert on Asperger syndrome, stated in his guide to autism that a third of people with Asperger had depression, which ties in neatly with the figure mentioned above.Autism is a hidden disability, invisible to the naked eye, so other people don't see what we go through. It means people feel like they can have a go at us, because there's nothing visibly wrong with us.
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