Judith Gould is the Lead Associate Consultant at the National Autistic Society Lorna Wing Centre for Autism and retired as Director of the Centre in 2015. She is a Chartered Consultant Clinical Psychologist, with over 40 years experience, specialising in autism spectrum disorders and learning disabilities.

Before being the Director of the Lorna Wing Centre she worked as a member of the scientific staff of the Medical Research Council Social Psychiatry Unit and was a Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London. She has also worked as a Clinical Psychologist within both health and social services. She has published widely in the field of autism spectrum disorders. Her current interest is the diagnosis of women and girls on the spectrum.

Lorna Wing and Judith Gould’s early work in the 1970s on the epidemiology of autism and related conditions, led to the concept of a spectrum of autistic conditions.

Judith Gould, together with Lorna Wing, set up The Centre for Social and Communication Disorders (now the Lorna Wing Centre for Autism) which was the first service in the UK to provide a complete diagnostic, assessment and advice service for children, adolescents and adults with social and communication disorders.

The Centre’s team also offers training to professionals in their methods of diagnosis and assessment of needs. Lorna Wing and Judith Gould developed an interview schedule called the Diagnostic Interview for Social and Communication Disorders (DISCO) to be used as part of the diagnostic process. This schedule enables the professional to use a dimensional approach when making a diagnosis which is more helpful than diagnostic sub-grouping when planning treatment, education and care. This approach bests fits the new DSM 5 Diagnostic Classification System. DISCO is widely used throughout the UK and overseas, and training in its use is carried out both at the Centre and internationally.