Ondine has autism. Even though she had always struggled with making friends, she did well in high school, earning good grades. Her school district offered support services for students with developmental disorders, and with that assistance she successfully enrolled in a local college. Yet when those supports disappeared after graduation, “she basically fell apart,” says her mother, Amira. A month into her freshman year of college, Ondine stopped going to classes and completing assignments; eventually she stopped leaving her dorm room altogether. Forced to drop out and move back home, Amira says that her daughter “didn't leave her room for 23 hours a day.”
Ondine's story is not unusual. Many parents liken the experience of their child with autism leaving high school to “falling off a cliff.” In many states, young adults with special needs are entitled to school-related support services until age 21 or 22, but after that it is up to them and their parents to find and qualify for services to help them navigate adult life. Until recently, those services barely existed for a growing segment of the population: high-functioning adults with autism. Studies show this group is underemployed compared with people with more severe cognitive disabilities, and surveys find they are often unhappy and lonely. Their unique combination of normal or high intelligence and deficits in social understanding puts these young adults in a frustrating position: many have the same goals as their typically developing peers but struggle to achieve them.
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