Autism is not an illness. Being autistic does not mean you have an illness or disease. It means your brain works in a different way from other people. It's something you're born with or first appears when you're very young. If you're autistic, you're autistic your whole life. Autism is not a medical condition with treatments or a "cure".​

Autistic people may:

• find it hard to communicate and interact with other people

• find it hard to understand how other people think or feel

• find things like bright lights or loud noises overwhelming, stressful or uncomfortable

• get anxious or upset about unfamiliar situations and social events

• take longer to understand information

• do or think the same things over and over

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