Autistic Doesn’t End at 18: Finally, Research Looks at Aging on the Spectrum
It’s not flashy. It’s not packed with biotech buzzwords or predictive diagnostics. But the new McMaster University study on aging and autism deserves our attention — and possibly, our gratitude.
Because for once, the research isn’t trying to fix us. It’s trying to understand us.
Led by Dr. Meghann Lloyd, the project explores what life looks like for autistic people as they age — particularly around health care, social support, housing and quality of life. In her words: “We want to understand how their experiences change over time.”
That sentence alone sets this study apart. No talk of biomarkers. No focus on early detection. No whispered hope that autistic lives can be rerouted through prevention. Just a basic, humane premise: autistic people grow old. And no one’s been listening.
The field of autism research has spent decades obsessed with early childhood. Every funder wants to decode the toddler. Every clinician wants to intervene before the child knows who they are. Meanwhile, the first full generation of diagnosed autistic adults is aging — into a system that never imagined them living this long.
There are autistic elders who never had a diagnosis. Others who’ve lived through decades of institutionalization, coercion or erasure. And many more who were late-diagnosed, navigating aging without a roadmap, a network or a care system that believes them.
This study doesn’t pretend to solve that. But it names the gap. And that’s a start.
To be clear, the framing isn’t perfect. The language still tugs toward “support needs” and “quality of life” without always naming power, systems or autistic agency. We don’t yet know how involved autistic people were in shaping the questions. And there’s always a risk of reducing people’s lives to aging checklists.
But this research doesn’t ask what’s wrong with autistic elders. It asks what’s missing around them.
That distinction matters.
Because autistic people don’t stop being autistic when they age. They just stop being visible in a culture that doesn’t make room for them. Research like this could help change that — not by discovering “causes,” but by listening to lives.
And in this field, that’s revolutionary.