 Autism. It's a word you may already be familiar with. Most people have a rough idea of what autism is. After all, 700,000 people in the UK exist somewhere on the autism spectrum. Asperger's syndrome is described as a high functioning form of this condition. Those with Asperger's syndrome are generally indistinguishable from your average person. They often go without the social support that others on the autistic spectrum receive. They are given special education to help them fit better into society, but they stand as some of the most vulnerable individuals at all stages of life. At school they are bullied, socially isolated. In adulthood, 70% of autistics receive a significant lack of support from social services, and at least one in three live with severe mental health difficulties. Despite a strong presence in the world of scientific research and social awareness, it stands as perhaps the most misunderstood condition in our society. In this documentary, I'm going to explore the reasons behind this mental health crisis and tease out whether it's an issue of biology or whether it's social. I would mainly describe autism to someone who doesn't have it as someone who doesn't have autism has all of the social and body language characteristics innate within them. I'd say that it's kind of like a list of trains that come in many different combinations, but there are always a few that are the trend between those people. I'd describe autism in the realm of social communication, social isolation, and also the repetitive obsessive nature of life, so hobby is interesting. You become slightly affixed with it and you can't really think about anything else. If you're neurotypical, which is basically not being autistic, then you see life as a colour screen TV, you can hear all the voices, you can see what's going on, you can follow the plot of whatever's on the telly. But when you're autistic, it's like it's black and white TV and it's a bit fuzzy and so you're missing some of the information visual and oral, so you're only really getting part of the picture of what's happening around you and you have to find ways to interpret that. There's fine social communication really difficult while some can be quite chatty and the main thing is the literal interpretation. Of anything that they're asked to do or that they're told. Yeah I mean it's a funny question and it's a good question because I think most autistic people would say yes and no. One thing that I tend to like about being autistic is that I've had to learn my emotions, learn social interactions, so it's made me earn those things as opposed to being in doubt with them. I think I would say on the whole, I'd say I like being autistic, obviously it has its drawbacks. I really like being autistic. It's very liberating to know that you're autistic because it's something that I think is like an integral part of your personality or at least it has been for me my whole life. It has its difficulties obviously but I think it's part of what makes me me and I wouldn't change that. An autistic spectrum disorder is described as a complex developmental disability. Asperger's syndrome is a relatively high functioning form of autism meaning that those who are diagnosed with this condition generally seem to be quite normal and often have IQ scores that surpass your average person. In the 1970s a popular autism researcher named Lorna Wing developed the triad of impairments to explain the signs of Asperger's syndrome in children. The triad has three different but important aspects to it. The first being communication and language difficulties characterised by difficulty understanding and using both non-verbal and verbal communication. The second aspect is difficulties with social interaction. This means that they find it extremely hard to understand social behaviour and this can impact their ability to make friends, develop relationships and develop healthy relationships with their co-workers. The third sign is perhaps the most difficult trait to spot. It's characterised by rigidity in thought but it's also characterised by an inflexibility in behaviour. The rigid thinking manifests as a difficulty understanding another person's point of view. The inflexibility in behaviour usually manifests itself as difficulties coping with changes in routine and daily life. The triad is by no means a conclusive list of the problems autistics face in our society but it can give us an idea of why autistics tend to be more socially isolated and distressed than their neurotypical counterparts. For the first part of my journey I wanted to get a good idea of how non-autistics viewed autism. To get a realistic view I needed to interview someone with experience of autism but it wasn't just enough to choose someone with formal training on supporting autistics so I decided I would pay a visit to my taekwondo instructor, a new from previous experience that is trained many people both on and off the autistic spectrum. Hopefully I could get an idea of how autism appears to the general public, how people adjust their views and some of the trials and tribulations they experience when trying to understand autistic people. So I'm the lead coach here at Horizon Taekwondo so I guess being older and more experienced my role here is to lead the other coaches. I also teach classes as well so I coach on a class level and an individual level in the organisation and definitely it does actually because it brings I guess more of an environment to people with disabilities and difficulties because normally they will be within I guess social care groups where it's disability only or learn difficulties only whereas it's more of an environment that's inclusive so everyone's there so everyone learns from each other so people like myself would learn what people would learn difficulties are all about and not sort of stigmatise those people and they are put into one box and then I guess the people would learn difficulties challenging behavior and various disabilities they'd be around people like yourself and sort of learn a different rate I guess because you're around people that are different to what you would normally be putting I guess through the various education groups and work groups and social groups. Oh yes definitely and that's through a lack of understanding from myself and it's only became a problem because of my lack of awareness so for example some of the learning difficulties joins our club you know the immediate assumption may be they're all the same you know all people with autism for example are the same well actually not everyone is an individual regardless of whether they have learned difficulties or not various things that cause conflict within the club is lack of awareness of the actual disability from the rest of the participants. I don't think it's more of a lack of tolerance because I think people in the UK especially that are very tolerant and adaptive I think it's just lack of awareness because it isn't that you know someone with learning difficulties walks in and you know they always you know put a special bib on them to where so everyone's aware it's not like that that's not how we want to know what everyone's to be treating the same. I think so yeah because normally people go through an education system which is a one-size-fits-all whereas sports such as tic-wondo and all this every sports individual are different but it's just a different type of learning so in the tic-wondo club that we have obviously there's the physical aspects which you won't get in any other sport you won't get it through the standard education system there's also the self-independent side so in the tic-wondo sport you've got to be independent you've got to learn for yourself you've got to act more mature you've got to be a self-starter there's also the social side as well so yeah while you might be fighting in the ring on your own you know you're on your own but you're supported by a coach and you're supported by a big party's atmosphere and crowd and when you train you've got a team of people around you so it does teach social skills as well and then people with learning difficulties who come into the club and not have well-versed well-exercised well-seasoned social skills but being in in the team environment they've got no choice but to adapt so having autism I don't think is a disability in in in life generally I think everyone is born and you have what you have whether you have autism whether you have learned difficulties whether you have super intelligent or not it doesn't matter to me I find that people with with autism are very very driven provided we can get the right environments around people you can get the best out of people and I find people with autism do try and watch much harder and more focused and they stick to schedules much better so if we have a schedule therefore a routine that these people will do that particular schedule and learn faster and get physically better physically stronger mentally stronger because of the schedule and their ideas of that schedule so when I was growing up I was brought up around people who learn difficulties and various disabilities when I came into teaching to condo I had that life experience but at the time I felt yeah I know everything I know everything about people learning difficulties and disabilities because I've been brought up around it but no there's a lot more to it everyone is different and while I might have made reasonable response for one person joining that club that's you need something different for someone else that may join who has learned difficulties there's not everyone's the same but what does make me proud is people with disabilities have had over the years we've got to black belt about 12 second down we've got them to international competing level why should it be that you know if this person walks through the door and they've got everything available to them but this is for the person walks through the door and yeah they've got a disability or something so all the difficulties you know the stack was in the door so that just doesn't seem right to me I think everyone should have the same access to everything based on you know what their availability is and what their level is rick's interview gave me a lot to think about it was apparent that he showed a genuine understanding of autism he challenged a lot of initial prejudgements people can have but he also reflected on how he previously thought about the condition to further the story I needed another angle on the experience someone with a more intimate relationship with autism sometimes with autism is it obviously disadvantageous you socially to a really great extent which kind of means you depend on meeting certain types of people and those people don't have to be autistic but they are usually people who aren't completely normal either when you're growing up it's difficult because you're always kind of progressing onto that next stage of school or six or more or whatever university to get that stability of friends you've got to reach a kind of you know the end of your teenage years and that's that's what's difficult I think and if you're not particularly good at making new friends and it's it's a difficult moment it's constantly changing so much so in terms of romantic relationships I had my first girlfriend at 17 it was a four month relationship didn't really go well because of my well lack of experience and just being new to it which I guess you could attribute more to just being 17 than being autistic I used to have to look like a small group of friends at school but in general I defied it hard to maintain friendships so I think on average for an autistic person I've done quite well socially because I've been quite lucky with who I've known and not to say there hadn't been problems and I very often felt misunderstood by people around me that's more or less a universal experience of people with autism so I was diagnosed diagnosed with autism at the age of three because I wasn't responding to my own name and one of the things it was kind of picked up in nursery was the teacher would say would address the class and I would not respond to it due to me not recognising myself as the rest of the class but I'm Adam I'm not class yeah I found school really difficult I absolutely hate it I think the most difficult thing was sort of being autistic but not being aware of it at the time because I was only diagnosed at 19 so throughout the school I did not have any support at all autism at school in pretty much every other aspect was hell because the thing is if I if I tried if I even dared to speak about my interests with people my own age I would just be mocked for it well when I was at school yeah I was I was driven about filmmaking which is you know it's just turned into my you know my because I was on YouTube and I was making films I was putting it out there as you know making myself a very open person it left me yeah quite quite vulnerable in the sense that when I was at school it was a case where yeah people picked on me because of it and and that probably yeah created a bit of a negative experience still there's always unfortunately about fitting in you know and if you don't fit the crowd then then naturally you're gonna you're gonna stand out and you're gonna be picked on every autistic person he's met was traumatised by their experience at school assuming they went to a mainstream school so I'm certainly would say that applies to me I found it very traumatic with the thoughts of the previous interview still clear in my mind I decided to interview someone with a strong understanding of autism but also someone with a good background in formal training it just so happens that someone in my own family has a strong role in the realm of special needs and public awareness so I traveled down to my hometown Harrogate to pit the brains of someone I believe had a lot of important things to say okay so I started out as a primary school teacher and was linked with a lot of schools that had autism specialists so I learned a lot about autism and special needs and wanted to sort of broaden my interest so I I did a lot of courses and then eventually went for a job as a teacher in charge of a specialist provision which provided an outreach service to about 100 schools in North Yorkshire so what I do is I go in and I advise them on how to teach children with autism and aspergers how to support them how to support their families I write some of the training for North Yorkshire I also deliver training to parents in workshops as well post diagnosis so it's quite varied as well as teaching children directly on in reach a lot of it's an advisory role I think I think there's a lot of difficulties with teaching children on the spectrum there's an awful lot of strengths but a lot of art on the misunderstood particularly girls that mask their social skills because they're very good at copying the girls and they're naturally more sociable so that can be really difficult um I think the thing that I underestimated with children on the spectrum is um the level of anxiety that can be caused by um social communication it can also be usually caused by any sensory needs as well and that's really underestimated later on particularly children with aspergers and can develop mental health difficulties because of high anxiety and trying to fit with social norms I don't think we need to like write down that that need to fit with social norms at a young age I personally I think um any difference should be celebrated I don't see autism or anything else as a disability we always talk about differences a disability it is a very different way of thinking I quite often describe it as having an xbox and a ps4 they've both got the same purpose and function but they're just hardwired differently the children that I work with I have worked with they're an absolute joy they're very affectionate they're very empathetic they can develop skills very quickly they're very quite intuitive quite often very very kind and very but actually very vulnerable very vulnerable to other children society other people you are autistic yeah you are typically developing yeah you are whatever label but you're still just you you are that unique person you are individual and you can do what you need to do probably one of the most important aspects are to raise awareness but not just to raise awareness of autism because I know there's been a lot on television it's quite often we get children not invited to parties or we get children that are not understood and their their children are asked to stay away from them so I've started in schools doing a little bit more of inviting inviting parents of that are typically developing come to workshops so that they can understand autism better I think having experienced the mental health systems that are currently in place I think there needs to be a lot more psychiatrists and psychologists that have a particular skill a particular specialism with autism because we know that people that have just general skills don't actually think outside the box to how somebody is wired so it has to be done in a very very different way and we've myself I've searched for psychologists and psychologists that can do that job post 18 and there is a gap there is a huge gap honestly I was so shocked at just how much insight Michelle gave us she highlighted some of the major problems children on the spectrum experience at school and there we have a large gap in the number of doctors able to treat mental health in adults all of this gave me a lot of insights into why autistics are so often isolated and alienated I spent the next few weeks pondering about who could give me the other side to the story it was going to be very difficult to find someone with an experience of autism in adults I needed someone to give me a more personal understanding of the problems autistics face yeah I feel it's a lot like mental health but the problem because especially with those who are less severe it's not noticeable really and people aren't aware understand that just because someone doesn't look typically autistic or whatever it doesn't mean that they haven't got any issues at all and just like if anyone else treat them as an individual yeah I've evolved to fit into the environment that I live in you know and and therefore it would be strange for for society to adapt to a minority I guess I suppose there needs to be a degree of acceptance about fitting into autistic people this whole reasonable adjustments and needs to be made a big deal of as far as changing the way that society views autism I feel like it's definitely changed a lot throughout my lifetime personally I feel like society is very accepting and that personally in my adult life I've had absolutely no concerns when I've told anyone that I'm autistic it's not something that I regularly tell people I feel that society is moving in the right direction actually I feel that people are learning more I don't think it's that people are willfully ignorant when the problems happen it's mostly because they don't know what to do I think if people want to improve things further there's lots of things but basically if you really listen to what we say about our experience and what's difficult and if anything autistic people tend to underplay their difficulties being autistic is accommodating the entire universe that doesn't understand you just just think autistic people are accommodating you all the time if you don't think autistic people are accommodating you you don't know any autistic people and sometimes a little bit back a little bit just a little bit of effort the other way would be enough with much difficulty and managed to get in contact with the co-founder of Southwood Autism a charity focused on supporting autistics in difficult everyday situations with a diagnosis of asperger syndrome and a strong dedication to improving the lives of autistics I was sure he had a lot to bring to the table so I finished up joining an embryonic local support group which was just come down have a cup of tea her chat and see where to from there and that developed into what is now sovereign autism we have clients who are what many would see as a classically autistic person but a client list also includes surgeons engineers local authority management so we will get between them and a landlord an employer benefit system local authorities etc pretty much negotiate for either side to help each other to understand the other's point of view in the situation no I spent the last six years listening to autistic people and listening to the problems that they have and how they often can't articulate the problem and having to work with that but other than that reading and talking to people that are supposedly experts of all sorts of description in the area no formal training the frightening thing is that more and more people seem to agree with me we only really work with autistic people but by that time including families at the end of the day autism is a genetic condition you inherit it from your parents you pass it on to your children there is no debate about that how it expresses in an individual is very much subject to that individual's makeup and the environmental circumstances around that person so it may well be that any given family it's the most extreme individual that gets the diagnosis first the difficulty with some can be that they tend to pretend they're normal against all the evidence especially young people teenagers and early twenties they're so busy trying to live a life trying to find out what what life has installed for them the last thing they want to be discussing is how they are different from everybody else they don't want to be forced to accept help that they don't see they need and unfortunately they are so busy refusing this help they often don't see the pitfalls coming until too late then we find ourselves in crisis mode trying to get under the ax before it actually lands and we're not always successful the biggest problem that we see from non-autistic people is as a result of working with them because of the involvement of an autistic person and they really have no idea none whatsoever they may have read a book they may have seen a film they may have heard about it but because they've not put any time into it they've not put any time into understanding the individual all the left with is cliched preconceptions about what autism supposed to be almost everybody universally is so sold on their preconceptions of whatever they see it's difficult to get them to see it differently every day one of the beauties i won't say joys because sometimes it can be quite difficult of working with autistic people is that everyone is radically different there's always something new to learn about every person and from every person but there is also the joy that i have never come across a nasty autistic person i've never come across an autistic person that would steal i've never come across an autistic person that would tell lies either to harm somebody else or for their own advantage we seem to be much more focused on what is right and proper would i like it if somebody did this to me it really is a revelation every time i speak to an autistic person the problems they deal with how they deal with it how they perceive those problems and how they perceive the interactions with other people and unpeeling that on you is always revealing so as much as i spend my time helping other people in itself it is an education for me the best person i've ever come across for dealing with autistic people profess to know nothing about autistic people but she was just genuinely kind accepting non-judgmental and seeking to help it didn't matter whether you had autism or learning disabilities or were in a wheelchair she was just there what can i do to help now if the rest of the world would actually start adhering to the various religions that they profess even if it's just humanism and became nicer people autistic people would have all the help they need what we need is space people to cut us a little bit of slack not expect to measure up to their expectations of how to behave a little bit of tolerance for the times we have a wobble if somebody has a couple of drinks at an office party nobody condemns them for the rest of their career about being a little bit silly after midnight so why should anybody condemn condemn an autistic person for doing something that they may not have known was an issue if the world was a nicer place autism would not be a problem we would just be people slightly different but we'd just be people that is the biggest thing autism needs social is all autism does not necessarily come with any physical characteristics the social model of disability is the most applicable to autism because there is nothing disabling per se about autism it might make life more difficult but a society would stop expecting us to behave to a standard that they think is normal and just accepted that we are the way we are with all our twists and turns and abnormalities it would start to realize that none of the things they see as being different matter they just don't matter yes meltdowns are a problem but so is epilepsy nobody worries too much about an epileptic they know what to do and they just deal with it when they find one if people would have a little bit more information and just be a little bit more charitable we need to educate non-autistic people in the right way to understand how autism works what it is what it isn't and we also need to educate autistic people that all of us are different but none of us are broken i started off with an idea of what autism was and why autistics face so many problems in our society my interviews with rick gave me a lot of insight into how someone's opinions can change about the condition he also taught me just how crucial getting an in-depth personal understanding of aspergers is to the world with michelle she gave a great outsider's perspective on autism in children and what may be at the heart of the problems they face in adult life and lastly peter helped me understand the actual issues autistic struggle with and just how important small acts of kindness and understanding are to the lives of these people it wasn't just these individuals throughout the process i got a strong appreciation for just how diverse and different autistics can be from each other their experiences their struggles their outlooks on life and most importantly the strength that's required to face these issues head on there's a lot to learn from the things we've seen today will it really make a difference are we going to ignore the issues facing autistic people at the end of the day they spent their entire life learning about you learning to adapt to a society that is not built for them just as everyone else in this world all they need is to feel like they're understood and loved for who they are a little kindness acceptance and tolerance can make a huge difference yeah i mean autistic people have a lot to offer the world they've got incredible intelligence incredible skills and abilities and incredible dedication and motivation we've got a respect that the fact that autistic people can be successful and can change the world you know well based on the prevalence of autistics in science and literature and all that i would say that there's as i've said earlier that autism that autistics have a lot to offer the world in terms of moving the world forward in technology but also i don't like to differentiate autistics from anyone else so i'd say what do autistics have to offer the world as much or as little as anyone else i think honesty and being able to get to the heart of the problem and hopefully will be a BS that other people focus on and can't leave on from well again it depends on the person i think most autistic people can think with themselves and can often really perceive what's going on in society so again it's like more autistic what is a herd i think it has benefited everyone because we tend to be more detached kind of emotionally which can come across as being quite cold-hearted but it's it's not that at all it's just the way we process stuff is very different autistic in its original definition is defined by spurger and his colleagues was like the outsider the autistics for the children that weren't spending time with the other children and and that that is a bit of a problem because it it means that there's this association this connotation that will always be there there's no reason why autistic people can't can't just be like people have normal relationships normal lives you are entitled to live a life just as everyone else does