Autism is a mental condition that is marked by an absorption with the self, including difficulty relating to and communicating with other people and difficulty understanding abstract concepts. A person who has autism is described as “autistic.”
The word autism is taken directly from the Greek root auto, meaning “self.” Because people who have autism may display a wide variety of symptoms, autism is considered a range of disorders (as opposed to just one condition) known as autism spectrum disorders. Depending on what symptoms a person displays, they fall on different places on the autism spectrum.
