CHLOE Butler writes about Autism because she doesn’t want children with the conditions to grow up in a world that “says they’re wrong”.

Now 20, the Swindon girl was diagnosed with Autism at 15 after a childhood that had seen her struggle with depression and bullied by her peers for being different.

Five years on from her diagnosis, Chloe is one of a growing number of writers, videographers and photographers working on Swindon youth magazine #iDare, a monthly publication aimed at promoting issues important to young people in the town.

Speaking during BBC Wiltshire's Mental Wealth month, a wellbeing campaign backed by the Advertiser, Chloe said: “People can read what I write and understand what it’s like to have Autism. There are so many people who don’t understand how it affects me. I may not look disabled, but how I look at the world might not be the way you look at the world.

“I would love to go inside somebody else’s mind and see how they look at the world. I feel like an alien sometimes.

“I see people doing fun things and think, ‘I’d like to do that.’ But I don’t, because it may look ‘non-adult’.”

Autism is a developmental condition. Surprisingly common, it affects more than one person in every 100. It affects how people communicate with the world and relate to other people.

Before she was diagnosed, Chloe says she couldn’t understand why she didn’t seem to fit: “I struggled to explain to people how I was feeling. I got frustrated when I couldn’t do things as well or as easily as other people and it made me angry with myself.”

Finding Swindon support group DASH, for people with Autism, helped immeasurably: “I started to flourish. I was with people who understood what was different about me. I was with like-minded people.”

But she still finds some days harder than others. What she wants, she says, is simple: for people to understand.

Experiencing a meltdown in Swindon town centre, only one person – an NHS mental health worker - stopped to check how she was feeling.

Chloe said: “I felt eyes on me, like they were judging me. I don’t want that for people like me.”

Anyone who saw what they believed was a meltdown should very simply and calmly “ask what’s wrong”, she added. Autism charities stress that meltdown, a loss of control that can be expressed through shouting, crying or lashing out, are not the same as a temper tantrum.

Chloe told the Advertiser: “People think that Autistic children are naughty. They don’t have the knowledge to see they might be having a mental meltdown because they’re overstimulated.”

Asked her message for a young person recently diagnosed with a condition on the autistic spectrum, Chloe said: "Nothing’s wrong. To quote Lady Gaga, you’re born this way. It’s true, you were born this way. Just be yourself."

The second edition of the #iDare magazine focussed on mental health issues. To read it, visit: www.idare.blog.