Current autism testing tends to exclude girls and women from diagnosis of autism, per MIT study.
ADOS is seen as the “gold standard” for autism testing by many clinics, insurance companies and clinicians.
What if I were to tell you that the ADOS makes it hard for girls and women to get a diagnosis of autism?
MIT did research and showed that not only does the test not include many females in its development, but also limited the diagnosis of females. Autistic females took the ADOS and scored much lower than autistic males.
Only half of the females met criteria for autism. Yes, these are individuals already known to be autistic.
Maybe it’s time to drop the ADOS? At the very least, it’s time to revise our evaluations to include all.
