“Autism spectrum disorder spiked 175% among people in the U.S. from 2.3 per 1,000 in 2011 to 6.3 per 1,000 in 2022, researchers found. Diagnosis rates climbed at a faster rate among adults in their mid-20s to mid-30s in that period, according to a study published Wednesday in JAMA Network Open.”
Four times as many children have been diagnosed with autism in the past two decades amid improved awareness and screening and evolving definitions. A new study suggests diagnoses have increased at a faster clip among younger adults over the past decade.
Diagnosis, not incidence.
I believed that too until seeing the dramatic increase in issues with school kids the last few years. It really is out of control in classrooms and i can’t imagine what will happen in 20 years when these kids parents begin to age and can’t care for them as adults at home.
If what you’re referring to is behavioral problems, the more obvious explanation to me is that as kids spend less and less time being physically active, they become more restless and feel under-stimulated when they have to sit in school all day.
Don’t forget the chronic defunding of public schools, leading to less individualized attention and overall lower quality of staff
And the pandemic. The effects of the pandemic did a massive number on so many younger kids behaviorally.
So yeah, there are numerous reasons for the upswing in social and behavioral issues in kids over the last several years.
And the lack of parents at home during the day to parent, and the fact that those parents are exhausted at night when they both finish working.
We’ve really created a perfect storm of horrible conditions to raise healthy and well adjusted children
Not just behavioral, though that’s a component of it, but nonverbal, very very delayed motor skills, feeding difficulties, etc.
Plenty of people are now old enough that they can go see a doctor themselves and get the diagnosis that their parents never bothered to or were unable to bring them to get when they were kids.
Autism or autism diagnoses?
Tik Tok says I have it
as a diagnosed clinical depresseee, when they told me I was on the spectrum, suddenly my life made sense and my therapy changed for the better…i’m 45…
Autism DIAGNOSIS may be “spiking”.
This has the energy of “There weren’t gay/trans people when I was young”
Oh, there very DEFINITELY were gramma…
Or, maybe better diagnosis resources are pointing at the fact there’s more autistic people
Perhaps we will discover it’s the neurotypicals that are actually divergent.
That would be awesome.
Next we should make extroverts and morning people feel like the freaks they are.
I’m autistic and a morning person. Let’s not introduce unnecessary criteria.
My finger hurts from all the sign tapping
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Isn’t this because the spectrum was expanded? Bunch of people I can think of growing up that were probably autistic but at just called them “eccentric” or “a bit odd” but were overall functional and could live a normal life. Those people today would be considered autistic whereas before they weren’t. Like a level 1 could go unnoticed by just about everyone.
Anyways I also find a lot of young adults are proud (?) to be autistic and act like it’s a superpower. As the father to an autistic child, it really isn’t. But I’m glad you guys have self esteem
Wasting all your effort on appearing still not “normal” instead of living some kind of sincere life is just very stupid.
You sound very young. Acceptance and feeling normal is extremely important to human beings and pretty much every creature on earth. Autism is a struggle, not a super power
I’m 28. Acceptance and feeling normal via imitation are not real and those who go this way will suffer.
And sincere acceptance is just that, it doesn’t force you to pretend.
You may also find out that people capable of that are not as rare as it seems. You won’t be lonely.
OK, I am, but that’s mainly due to having limited energy.
I’m of the opinion that in a few decades we’ll see autism and ADHD dropped from the DSM as we recognize that for the majority of people it isn’t a disorder, it’s just our brains working differently. The conflict only happens because what we call neurotypicals made the rules for society (both “written” and “unwritten”) and are best suited to follow those rules, so the rules never change.
Of course there are people on the non-functional end of the spectrum, and we may either come up with a new term for that, or just redraw the diagnostic line to be closer to the non-functional end.
Of course this assumes we as a species survive past the next couple decades, and that we continue to recognize and support neurodivergence, and start to uproot the neurotypical rules that only benefit neurotypicals.
I really hope it isn’t until power representation of autistic people in the society makes it unnecessary.
Otherwise not having a diagnosis (even self-diagnosed, but just existent) makes many NT’s think you should behave like them and they can try to force you to behave like them and it’s normal to expect you to behave like them.
Also I dunno if you realize that autism also refers to people really unable to function on their own.
Another case of Left Handed liberation.
I’m curious how much of this is from societal things and not just increased diagnoses.
In addition to people giving birth later, how much of that is “learned”. Like how many borderline people would have turned out “normal” from being forced to socialize, instead of being able to hide inside online all day.
That’s… not how autism works. It’s a neurodevelopmental disorder. Autistic nervous systems are literally wired differently than neurotypicals. “Turning out normal” as you call it is masking, which has been shown to be largely harmful for the mental health of autistic people.
It has its utility but I definitely agree it’s harmful in the long term. It would be nice to not have to mask to be accepted.
Autism is a spectrum, and an Autism diagnosis is drawing a line in the sand.
That’s not how that works. ASD is one thing; behavior is another. However.
My son is on the spectrum, not diagnosed until his mid teens. He’s attended some college so far, and took advantage of a support program at the school for people with an ASD diagnosis. The first year, he was in a dorm specifically built for this program, so over the course of the year, he got a lot of new exposure to “people like him.”
Just today he was remarking (again) about how “sheltered” and “coddled” a lot of the other students in this program are. He sees how people respond to situations, and he sees how parents interact with their kids when visiting, moving in/out.
My son is glad to not have had a diagnosis until later on. He recognizes that having gotten some bullying in school - while definitely not desirable, did happen - forced him to be introspective, and forced him to figure out coping mechanisms on his own.
Those are beneficial skills that are well taught by experience, and overprotective parenting (whether the kid is on the spectrum or not) reduces the ability for kids to learn those skills.
There’s bullying and there’s romantic trauma - a very normal thing for people with autism. There’s really nothing good in romantic trauma in an NT environment for an autistic person. Nothing good at all.
Also there’s some bullying and there’s a lot of bullying.
He might have simply been in a good school and called that bullying.
Anyway, there lived such a guy as M.I. Dragomirov, a Russian general, his approaches to warfare are a fossil, but his approaches to upbringing and healthy relationships in a military can be roughly summed up as “one who’s taught to fear a stick will fear enemy bayonet even more”. Being subject to bullying does not generally teach one bravery. I mean, there are probably very virtuous parents who’ll explain to their kid that always hitting back and even when the teachers and other kids are on the bully’s side. But a lot of parents will pretend there’s no bullying and tell their kid to ignore it, and that hitting back is wrong.
I would really like to not have been in that school, the skills I’ve learned there I feel I won’t ever need in any environment other than an actual warzone. But in that case an autistic person will function even worse than other people, skills or not.
He’s lucky, it sounds like he found out at the right time. I didn’t find out until much later and while my coping and masking skills work for a few hours, they’re exhausting to do, they make me feel like I’m lying about who I am, and I can never be relaxed around people.
