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A panellist warned of a lost generation of undiagnosed autistic seniors
In short
At the 2023 Autistic Pride Day Symposium, a panellist described a lost generation of older autistic Australians and argued that aged care has to be planned for people who may never get a diagnosis.
Read it instead, 5 minutesThe transcript
The story
Sharon’s correction came in an offline conversation, and Kyriakos Gold, who hosted the session, repeated it to the room during the closing Q&A of the 2023 Autistic Pride Day Symposium in Melbourne. He had told her that he wished he had been diagnosed earlier. “I’m 47 and so I was born in the 70s”, he explained to the audience. Sharon had told him he did not wish that. Back in the 1960s, she said, it was called childhood schizophrenia, and it was the mother’s fault, the so called refrigerator mother. The exchange on stage ended with agreement that they had dodged a bullet.
A panellist used the exchange to turn the discussion towards people who did not dodge it. There was still a great deal of work to do, the panellist said, for seniors who came through without a diagnosis. The panellist called them the lost generation in Australia. Many had never been diagnosed, and the panellist said they were shut out of the scheme as well, because “if they’re over 65 they’re not eligible for the NDIS”. There was still a lot of work to do for the oldest autistic people, the panellist argued, and the age at which a person becomes a senior is itself different for autistic people.
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Sources the story draws on
- Getting started (National Disability Insurance Scheme) (opens in a new tab), Queensland Government
- Large Swedish study ties autism to early death (opens in a new tab), The Transmitter (Simons Foundation)
- Enriching the lives of Autistic seniors (Autism and golden years fact sheet) (opens in a new tab), Aspect
- National Autism Strategy 2025 to 2031: Older Autistic People Snapshot (opens in a new tab), Department of Social Services
- Release of the National Autism Strategy 2025 to 31 (opens in a new tab), Department of Health and Aged Care
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