For years, the word “autism” has followed my family like a whisper and a shout. It lives in the background noise of every morning routine, and it roars in the quiet moments of uncertainty. But what most people don’t realize—and what I didn’t fully understand at first—is that autism isn’t just about speech delays or social differences. It’s also about mental health.
And that, my friends, is where we’re failing our kids.
A new article from Brown University’s School of Public Health has made something painfully clear: autistic children are facing a mental health crisis that we’re simply not talking about enough. Read it here.
Let me bring that home.
I’m a 66-year-old AI strategist and independent IT expert. But more importantly, I’m a father to a 19-year-old daughter with autism. She’s smart. Beautiful. Fierce. Vulnerable. And like so many autistic kids, her emotional world is deep, complex, and too often misunderstood—even by systems meant to help her.
The Brown study found that young people with autism face staggering rates of depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation—often much earlier than their neurotypical peers. Why? Because we’re so focused on managing their behavior, we’re forgetting to nurture their emotional wellbeing. And that’s not just a clinical oversight. It’s a moral one.
It’s time to flip the script.
This is where AI should come in—not to replace therapists or caregivers—but to supplement them. To empower them. Imagine AI-powered emotional tracking tools that help nonverbal kids like my daughter express when they’re scared, overstimulated, or sad—without needing the perfect words. Imagine chat-based systems that can screen for anxiety symptoms in autistic teens who have learned to mask their distress until it breaks them.
But let’s be clear: this isn’t about shiny tech. It’s about bringing humanity back into the conversation.
Autism care can’t just be checklists and IEP meetings. It has to include soft places to land—tools and people trained not just to teach behavior but to see the full person beneath it. That means therapists who understand sensory overwhelm. Teachers who notice the signs of internal shutdown. And yes, technology that listens better than any test ever could.
This is deeply personal for me. Every meltdown we’ve survived as a family, every sleepless night, every moment where my daughter looked up and couldn’t say “I’m hurting”—those moments haunt me. And they drive me.
So, what do we do?
We demand more. From schools. From policymakers. From tech developers. From ourselves.
Mental health must be integrated into autism care. Not later. Not if there’s funding. Now.
Let’s teach AI to hear what nonverbal children can’t say. Let’s train teachers to respond to behavior as communication, not defiance. Let’s make space for our kids to be emotionally complex—because they are.
Autistic kids are not just puzzles to solve or systems to optimize. They are souls. And like all of us, their mental health matters.
Enough with the silos. Enough with the shame. Let’s build a world that sees the full picture—and then does something about it.
Because the future of autism care shouldn’t just be functional. It should be whole.