 But the whole thing about getting out of the house, that's not really an issue anymore. Mental health care is working. See what it can do for you at mentalhealthcareworks.org. A message from the American Psychiatric Association Foundation. As a young teenage boy, I didn't even know what autism was. How do you even spell that? A few years later, I heard that a friend's cousin's son had been diagnosed with autism. I still wasn't sure what that really meant. When I went to college, my roommate's brother had autism.