ASD in Real Life
A view into how ASD affects real people in their everyday lives
Russell Lehmann
"My name is Russell Lehmann, and I am a motivational speaker, author, poet and advocate, who just happens to have autism.
I have come a long, long way in life. When I was 12, at the height of my distress, I was pretty much non-verbal. I was too afraid of the outside world to speak to anyone other than my parents. I stayed inside my house as much as possible, clinging to my parents’ sides, terrified of any external stimuli, such as the doorbell ringing, the TV being on, or the microwave going off. I was a prisoner inside my own body. I would have multiple meltdowns every day, curling into a ball in the corner of a room, just crying for hours. I was extremely low-functioning, and could barely take care of myself.
Now, however, I’m a successful, confident man who travels the country spreading a message of hope, awareness, understanding and acceptance about autism and other disabilities."
Notable people with ASD
Although the formal diagnosis of autism has not been in use until the 20th century, ASD is certainly not a modern disorder. Autism and the people who have it have existed long before we had the knowledge and science to understand it. Here is a list of people in modern times and throughout history who are known or suspected to be somewhere on the autism spectrum. Many of the people on this list were never formally diagnosed due to the time period or personal choice, and although a retrospective diagnosis is challenging, those people were specifically chosen because multiple specialized medical professionals agree that they displayed numerous unwavering autistic traits.
From History
1. Hans Christian Anderson
2. Emily Dickenson
3. Albert Einstein
4. Thomas Jefferson
5. Nikola Tesla
6. Charles Darwin
7. Steve Jobs
8. Michelangelo
9. Mozart
10. Lewis Carroll
Alive as of 2020
1. Temple Grandin
2. Greta Thunberg
3. Daryl Hannah
4. Sir Anthony Hopkins
5. Dan Aykroyd
6. Bill Gates
7. Jerry Seinfeld
8. Satoshi Tajiri
9. Adam Young
10. Alexis Wineman
Visability
These are just some of the incredible things people with autism are doing in the world.
