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New research from Western Sydney University published recently by Powerd found that Autistic young Australians experience significantly poorer employment outcomes than their non-disabled peers. This article gave me pause, striking a raw nerve already reverberating from my own recent clinically confirmed Autistic status.
Self-diagnosis had been enough for me until a medication mishap landed me in rebound psychosis early in 2025. If I’d known anything about the proteins and neural pathways that play into chemical imbalance, my partner, children and I could have been spared that dangerous ordeal. Data and information are both crucial tools for wellbeing.
One of the things Dr Sagi, my psychiatrist of three years, mentioned in the aftermath of her confirmation is how Autists often have different rates of maturity and stages of capacity. While we can be incredibly accomplished in many ways, in others we can be five years behind the norms set by our peers.
As Sagi spoke to me about what it all meant, and how my brain had been this way since birth, I had a series of flashbacks.
If there was an opportunity to win a gold medal in masking, I would have made it to the record books
Starting secondary school introduced constant terror where I was awaiting discovery as a fraud. In what way, I didn’t know, but understood I had to make it work, to fit in and be like the others. As I calculated my age for capacity then as potentially 7, and for university only 13, it felt like a cosmic gut punch swirling with intense relief to finally understand.
I’d painfully contorted myself into shapes necessitated for conventional success throughout secondary school, leading to inevitable burnout and breakdown.
Combining tertiary education with the milestone of moving out of home had been too much, leading to a rusted on sense of failure that’s haunted me for decades.
Dropping out of university before the end of first year, I rarely slept well and remember being afraid of walking into the enormous auditoriums heaving with strangers. I’d sensed a sort of flashing light above my head, alerting everyone that I was an imposter who didn’t belong. It had first appeared at the age of twelve.
As luck would have it, I’ve eschewed the financial horror of a hefty HECS debt along with any kind of university education, and tumbled into my dream job that sees me managing my own directions of curiosity and workload. A good outcome, right? Yes and no.
This is only possible due to family support.
For people without the luxury of being middle class, white and having the capacity to mask their way safely through dangerous situations, outcomes can be dire and deathly
Had I been left to fend for myself like so many of my community peers, I have no doubt that I’d lose my grip on safe housing in a matter of months. Being able to hold down a traditional job in a typical workplace was possible for short stints, but ultimately untenable.
I asked a friend recently if this made me a nepo baby, and their response was that I was more like a traumo baby. Being broken down by system after system precipitated being rescued by family in ways that made it possible for me to do this work at all. Being deeply aware of my privilege hasn’t prevented me from regularly facing the edge of existence and living with complex PTSD. That awareness has driven an obsession to use the energy I have to agitate for change. Every action accumulates into a broader fight to spare people without a safety net some of the pain of living in a neurotypical world with undiagnosed and unsupported Autism.
So what needs to change? Making GP and psychiatrist appointments accessible to everyone now would be a long overdue and life-saving change. Accessibility means a lack of barriers and hurdles. Smaller paperwork mountains and affordable appointments would be a good start. Addressing the lack of cultural safety seems to be the obvious next step. Then, too, a provision for meeting potential fallout post confirmation with appropriate support, preventing the repeated sense of being “thrown out into the world”. There can be significant grief in reckoning with hindsight, and this must be processed safely with accessible and trauma-informed support.
The tide is churning and trying its best to make a drastic turn in a generative new direction. Activists and advocates, creatives and academics are leading a groundswell of neuro-affirming shifts in perspective, support and pathways.
We need those in power to come with us and make meaningful changes to education and healthcare. Not just hold senate enquiries and royal commissions, patting themselves on the back before turning away once again because it all seems too hard. Just like those impossible mountains of paperwork are for us to complete before we face the assessments required to grant us a diagnosis. The system should fit humanity, not the reverse.
I’d like to know what government officials are afraid of. If all neurodivergent people were empowered to live our lives well, what would that take away from anyone else? Would our happiness guarantee the downfall of others? Would it harm someone that we aren’t aware of?
Our current Minister for Health and Aged Care is The Honorable Mark Butler, MP. Mark, if these words find you somehow, I dare you to fix it properly. No band aids or empty promises, actually addressing the systemic injustice that has faced undiagnosed and unsupported neurodivergent people since time immemorial. When you’re ready to face this challenge, make sure you work in concert with us, acting from wisdom gained from lived experience, not what you assume is right on our behalf. Don’t engage focus groups to tick a box and waste our time. Utilise what we’re ready to tell you and see it through.
If we can manage to cosplay people who can tolerate the hoops and red tape required to potentially access support, only to be let down time and again in the eternal game of political football we find ourselves in, sorting out a just way forward for everyone is the least you can do in return