A life-affirming study shows how much attitudes have changed to the condition once known as ‘childhood psychosis’
Currently, the most high-profile person on the autistic spectrum in Britain is a garden designer with flamboyantly pink hair and muscly, tattooed arms. Star of Channel 4’s latest makeover show, The Autistic Gardener, Alan Gardner is just three years younger than my autistic older brother, but if you sat these two middle-aged men next to each other it would be very hard to see what they have in common. While one is charmingly articulate, capable of negotiating with private clients and a production company to create both beautiful gardens and engaging television, the other requires considerable support and is minimally verbal. How can the same word describe both these men?
There’s a clue in the dates when they were diagnosed – my brother in 1961, at the age of three, with what was then called “childhood psychosis”, and Alan Gardner only two years ago with Asperger syndrome. The fact that Gardner could have reached his 50s without a diagnosis doesn’t mean that autism didn’t affect his life, but it speaks volumes on how awareness of the autistic spectrum and its definition have changed over the last 50 years.
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