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?

Stats don’t take into account how much wages are reduced for those that are working. I work full time but earn a third of what I should be.

Obviously, having a disability or ND condition of any kind can incur extra expenses. But yes you can benefit financially from a grant that is aimed at a particular disadvantaged group - that's the point of such grants.

OK I admit defeat. I am not attacking autistic people, in fact my aim is to highlight a phenomenon that disadvantages autistic people, in a way that really annoys me, and yes I am cynical, and if you worked in these fields you might be too.

But you think I am attacking autistic people, so I apologise and will bow out.

Oh I'll just pop back to say I strongly refute the nazi implications. That has absolutley zero to do with my point and is a massive misrepresentation.

Obviously, having a disability or ND condition of any kind can incur extra expenses. - and there is a pay gap too of course.

Thank you for getting it toadasoda

Just to counter the idea that we’re all coining it in with our sweet little ND cash cows - there is often very little financial support available for families with children with SEN. Applying for benefits like DLA can be a longwinded process - we’ve looked at the forms and given up in despair. Yet many of the other benefits you might expect (things like cheaper carer tickets for attractions for instance) rely on DLA to prove you get them. So we get all the additional costs and none of the supposed ‘benefits’. And then we get to get berated on the internet by strangers too. Wonderful.

@LadyMadderLake Abelist culture and hostile words about 'floods' and 'cashing in' have consequences for all neurodiverse families. That includes the suggestion from a PP, that you cheerfully agreed to, that a family who had consulted multiple professionals, must therefore have been misrepresenting their child's condition because they wanted a label. Casual support for assumptions like that is chilling to families of disabled children who frequently have protracted battles to receive diagnoses and provision they are entitled to by law. They have to fight because the system is chronically underfunded and in several areas (including ND assessment, child mental health and the securing of SEN provision via EHCP) broken. And also because some frontline practitioners in education and health still have a poor understanding of autism and/or reflect the shitty prejudice that still pervades society, as frequently illustrated here on MN.

You also chimed in with your differentiation between deserving and underserving autistic people, complaining that those able to network socially were clearly undeserving of professional recognition, and exploiting their condition for gain. It is arrogant and offensive to set yourself up as an arbiter of who is and isn't 'profoundly affected', whatever that means. And you did not originally direct that exclsuively at the question of self-ID, as you now suggest.

PPs have explained to you why this sort of smear is repellent. They have also explained to you the reality of autism's adverse impacts on employment prospects.

Let me just add to that the question of life expectancy. Autistic people's life expectancy is on average 16 years shorter, and the life expectancy of a long term carer is reduced on average by 8 years. Reflect on those numbers for a second.
That is why remarks that casually smear neurodiverse people and their families as opportunists are grotesque.

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/325546
This article suggests a link between processed food and autism.

“Prof. Nasar and team acknowledge the fact that more research is necessary before they can reach any clinical conclusions.”
no clinical conclusions whatsoever from the one link you provided to one study…..

So to summarise @toadasoda: autism; there's bound to be fakers, because that's 'human nature', and you and@LadyMadderLake, can sniff out, with your neurotypical powers of detection, who is genuinely and profoundly disabled, which bona fide ND people should appreciate as a display of support?

@LadyMadderLake awards seem to operate a bit like early modern witch trials; if you can actually turn up and claim an award by participating in an industry social event, you are instantly exposed as a faker?

Do you see the problem?

Seriously. Any clues on how to rake it in would be greatly received, we’re down loads since I can’t work full time 🙌

Many many autistic children are missed or denied a referral for diagnosis as they are coping. After Covid they stopped coping.

Autistic people generally like routine, when that routine is taken away it causes anxiety. When they got out of the routine of being at home in their safe space, a space they were not allowed to leave for many months, it caused massive upset and their autism could no longer be ignored.

You got it all arse about face! Autistic men are more likely to have children when they are older, autism is genetic. It's not the father's age that gives the children autism, it's the father's autism that gives the children autism!

Of course more studies are needed. That's the way of clinical research.
The authors of the study also say:

“This research is only the first step toward [a] better understanding of [ASD]. But we have confidence we are on the right track to finally uncovering autism etiology.”

Studies suggest that autistic people are 3 times more likely to struggle with addiction so the link is that autistic children have autistic parent/s.

@NoMor

I would second this; autistic men have a very very prolonged “adolescence”… indeed autistic people do.

I think there are a lot of things feeding into the increased incidence, particularly at the moment.

But another theory could be that with better support/acceptance more autistic people are having kids or having more than one kid. And I’d say there is some assortive mating as well where autistics are seeking each other out this you get more traits in offspring… That probably always happened but ability to function in society was not always as well supported to facilitate family life (work adjustments, supported living, DLA/PIP, CBT etc etc).

Time for the big klaxon call:

Correlation is not causation.

Ditto for comments about coke use and autism.

Pause for thought on this:
If you are autistic and struggle with everyday tasks, are you more or less likely than the average person to use processed food as a coping strategy so you don't have to do the labour and complex process of cooking from scratch?

If you are struggling with everyday life, are you more or less likely to be vulnerable to trying drugs because you are failing to cope?

The point is the 'not coping with everyday normal life' bit of autism.

Better diagnosis is part of the equation, I also think we have moved the goalposts as to what we define as asd to include many more people who before would have been described as quirky. My dd was diagnosed in 2001 aged 2 and at the time it was 1:100 it's now far more prevalent.

Unfortunately this wider range of people included does have negative impact on those more severely affected, people just don't take their needs as seriously now in my experience- the "everyone is a bit autistic" narrative I hear. My dd struggles with day to day living, though is verbal and very clever thankfully.

Haven’t RTFT, but ultimately for the kind of people who are now being labelled as ‘autistic’ - to quote from page 1 “Previously autistic people would have been labelled, a geek, a trainspotter, a nerd, the quiet one, the alternative one, the classical music player, the shy one, the loner, the depressed one etc etc. They’d make it through school (just) and perhaps get a job and then probably get forgotten by all friends, only really having contact with family.”

The simple answer is that we live now in a hyper competitive world with a huge cost of living issue and people need money and good, high paying, professional jobs. There is not the option for alternative lives or getting a job that allows you to work to live. And so social pressure to conform to the few available pathways is high and more support to enable everyone to get there is needed.

‘Autism’ as defined above should not really exist - it waters down real autistic needs among serious cases and tells anyone even mildly introverted that there is something wrong with them that needs to be fixed, whereas the reality is that in different times people would have viewed them as having interesting and different character traits. Bur our entire lives are now dominated by the need to become cogs in the machine.

Etiology can be a set of causes. They can be confident that are on the right track to understanding autism etiology but you cannot then make the assumption that a certain gut discovery is a significant part of this etiology.

science is fantastic and fascinating but people make too many assumptions or use it to fit their opinion.

@honestaspossible - the statistical anomaly that really leaps out here is how many cocaine users you know.

@RosaGallica I absolutely agree with your last paragraph. Basically slightly introverted now is interpreted as "on the spectrum" which seems to me a massive over simplification and avoids the fact that people are generally diverse and have diverse personalities from shy to outgoing. Immediately they are over-pathologised as if there is something wrong with them, by laypeople and non-specialist types. Diagnosis should be left to professionals, most speculation about these types being "on the spectrum" is harmful.

Not to mention that the moment someone "twirls their hair" (as identified about a friend by another friend) this means they get branded as "autistic" (at least my friend did). Neurotypical people can twirl their hair, tap their foot or whatever or stim. People are so quick to judge based on these things. It also disregards the other reasons people could behave differently - childhood trauma, for example, can lead to similar behaviours.

I've never met anyone who got a diagnosis on the basis of being mildly introverted. Whilst I don't know the ins and outs, many people I know with a diagnosis got one because they were struggling. Almost every female I've met with Autism was previously diagnosed with a mental health condition.

@mandymion @RosaGallica

Speculating that every geek out there is autistic is harmful, as is people who have no diagnosis telling people they are on the spectrum.

While some complain the movement to have all types of autistic under the same umbrella is harmful to those previously termed “low functioning”, I actually think it has been a revelation for those previously termed “high functioning”.

20yrs ago my family wanted me to get assessed and I was against it because I didn’t want to be associated with the autism stereotype that persisted at the time of severely compromised individuals.

After DC were diagnosed I bit the bullet. I could have saved myself decades worth of distress and accessed so much support!! It is only now where it is more acceptable and supported that I felt comfortable with the label. And I feel very relieved for all of the other people who like myself suffered in silence quite considerably to fit in.

The diagnosis process is difficult to access and laborious/exhausting. They are not handing them out like sweets.