Autistic discussion forums: Insights into the topics that clinicians don't know about.

User-led autism discussion forums provide a wealth of information about autistic lived experience, albeit oriented towards those who regularly use computers. We contend that health-care professionals should read autism discussion forums to gain insight, be informed, and in some cases, to correct assumptions about autistic persons' lives and possibilities. To argue our case, we conducted content analysis on 300 posts (71,000 words, mostly from Reddit and Quora). No users promulgated misinformation, but classic autism myths were discussed with examples of when elements of myths may be valid. We established that forums contain high-value information for clinicians by documenting that all concepts in the DSM 5 text revision were discussed by posters in the years before the text revision appeared. Forums are also useful for researchers by complementing traditional surveys and interviews. The relative ease of forum analysis lowers the bar for entry into the research process.