Diagnosis, Comorbidity, and the Question of What Makes Us Who We Are Before discussing autistic identity, it is necessary to clarify several terms that will be used throughout this article. Identity refers to the qualities, beliefs, personality traits, social roles, and affiliations that define a person or a group. It may include characteristics such as nationality, sex, profession, values, political or religious beliefs, and membership in particular communities. For example,

In recent years, increasing attention has been devoted to the phenomenon of autism diagnosis in adolescence and adulthood . Waiting lists for assessment have grown rapidly. In England, for example, the average waiting time for an autism diagnosis reached 300 days , substantially exceeding the 91-day target recommended by NICE (Fagg & Woodhead 2023). The rising demand for assessment reflects a broader shift in public awareness and clinical practice. Public discussion often pre

A Simplification That Simplifies Nothing The 5 th edition, published in 2013, set out to simplify and modernise the nosology of autism-related disorders, replacing the DSM-IV’s cluster of Pervasive Developmental Disorders (PDDs) — Autistic Disorder, Asperger’s Disorder, Childhood Disintegrative Disorder, Rett’s Disorder [ 1 ] and PDD-Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS) — with a single diagnosis: Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The intent was, in principle, laudable: a spectrum

The theory of mind (ToM) has been instrumental in shaping research in psychology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence, providing a theoretical framework for investigating the cognitive processes underlying social interaction and communication. Social cognitive deficits appear to be a core cognitive phenotype of many clinical conditions (Cotter et al. 2018). Early work in social cognition focused on the central role of ToM impairments as a hallmark feature of ASD (Baro