Massive increase of children with autism

[TickingKey46]

I've noticed since the lock down there is a massive increase in children being assessed for autism and associated conditions. I mean massive.

On the school run parents are often discussing it it's become so routine. I'm really interested in why. Why are so many children being diagnosed with this condition?

My mistake insomniac eyes. Apologies.

‘My sons school said they have a lot of what they call “Covid kids”. Whose social skills aren’t normal, but they don’t know whether it’s due to autism or being isolated at home for two years. They are putting these kids forward for assessment, a lot of them may turn out to be not autistic.

Obviously regional variables in play. While COVID may have resulted in an increase in MH presentations it is not the experience of myCAMHS team for an increase in NDD presentations. As others have stated our referrals pretty much stayed the same via GP some reductions in school referral but overall minimal change and we also continued to assess and diagnose right through lockdown.
The problem is individuals can only respond on their own family experiences without having any knowledge or experience of the referral / assessment processes.

@AutismProf

I wasn’t talking about NHS - I was talking about private services, where a great many children/adults are seen due to ridiculous NHS waitlists of several years.

Perhaps it depends on where you are in U.K., but what appears to be status quo in our region is having GP refer to NHS to get on list, then have the assessment done privately, which is then ratified by NHS and hey presto the person appears on the system.

Over Covid we tried several private providers and could not get anyone in the country - many had closed to new referrals and/or were not seeing anyone under X age due to social distancing.

Once things were safer they all opened up and this will have subsequently have resulted with an uptick in NHS (coming through from private).

i dont think the waiting list have time to ratify any more
Perhaps it depends on where you are in U.K., but what appears to be status quo in our region is having GP refer to NHS to get on list, then have the assessment done privately, which is then ratified by NHS and hey presto the person appears on the system.

it is all down to education accepting the private diagnosis afaik - and i believe that has changed

NHS is so overwhelmed that they are now referring people for private assessments, paid for by the NHS. A private diagnosis in this respect IS a NHS diagnosis. Although some of the private providers are so overwhelmed with patients referred from the NHS, they are now closing their doors and saying they can’t take any further referrals.

Yes this is what we are doing. NHS GP referred to a private assessment provider which is funded by the NHS under 'Right to Choose'. There's still a 12 month wait and we're travelling to the other end of the country but it's still going to be much quicker than trying to get on the local NHS waiting list (which has a very high threshold for accepting referrals and lots of hoops you have to jump through first).

because why should a paediatrician not do private work
privatisation by the back door

outsourcing.
every one is a winner

JudyEdithPerry

Who says those things contribute- you?

My children had an incredibly outdoorsy lifestyle with zero crap in their food, mostly organic in the early years and we live in a very rural area.

Its down to genes which you can see looking back through our family history.

And better diagnostics.

Pretty sure members of my family down through the ages would have pursued diagnosis too if they knew what we know now, particularly re women and girls.

Controversial comment but Does the gut bacteria have any link to breast feeding?

I've heard that there are more autistic children in the area around GCHQ who obviously would be more likely to have autistic employees.

I've heard similar claims about Silicon Valley and Harvard University. Although I do think stats like this are misleading as they feed into the stereotype of 'the autistic genius'. In truth, most autistic people have areas of outstanding strength coupled with areas of crippling weakness. My autistic kid was reading whole sentences at the age of 4, but he can still barely write his name at almost 10.....

I don't think it's entirely unhelpful. I get what you mean about the autistic genius stereotype but also I think it is useful for people to realise that there are professions where certain traits are highly valued.

DH has been diagnosed as autistic as an adult and reckons at least half the people in his workplace probably are (very specific skillsets that suit autistic people). The employer tends to tolerate a lot of their 'quirks' far more than most probably would.

I think DH feels lucky he fell into a profession where his strengths are valued and his weaknesses tolerated/supported, but surely it's a good thing to talk about so young adults can make informed decisions about careers that might particularly suit them?

It's about what contributes at a statistical level not an individual one though.

People often half read news items on allergies and sometimes make the assumptions that my children have allergies because I am fastidiously clean. Far from it, we live in the country and have pets and they climb trees etc. Both their dad and I had mild allergies growing up so the genetic link is there. But the research is about what causes a rise at a population level. It doesn't mean it applies to each individual

Thanks Judith for your links

Interesting. I thought you could recover your microbiome after antibiotics? And add to it with a varied diet? I had IV antibiotics after giving birth as did dc2 and I was extremely worried about our microbiomes afterwards. I really made an effort to eat the right things (bone broth and all that) and dc2 was EBF so I thought that would help him recover.

We have allergy in the family and dc1 who had no antibiotics and was also ebf has allergy and a fairly crap immune system. Dc2 has the constitution of an Ox and no apparent allergy. This would suggest his microbiome had recovered plenty however maybe something else down the line will come to light. It’s a very interesting area of research.

I’m only seeing a link for age. Not sure how you can compare previous generations as there is no data for my grandparents, parents or even my generation let alone diagnosis.

Could you name or link to any of these “grants”?

In my area, the number of occupations has narrowed considerably as house prices have gone up.

The house prices went up at a certain point. Very few parents can be stay at home parents. We've friends ten years older and it was massively different when there kids were the same age.

The net result is every other parent is a software developer. And software developers are 'interesting' people in the sense that social skills and special interests can be pretty... well y'know.

And that's the point at which ND presentation seems to shoot up and behavioural issues have started to shoot up.

The current yr4 at DS school fit this change at just this moment but nationally and internationally they are also the year that have fared worst because COVID hit when they started reception.

Increasing inequality is leading to a process of decreasing differences in demographics in specific local areas. Therefore you get pockets of high deprivation and pockets of professionals who have children much later and pockets of narrow occupation spread which will lead to couples staying within that narrow demographic and therefore narrowing genetic differences too.

Anecdotally I know a fair number of kids who are autistic locally. But obviously so and when you meet their parents there is little doubt about where that is coming from.

Hearing that there is supposed to be a higher rate around GCHQ does not surprise me in the slightest!