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?

@hattie43 that's one ignorant post.

Many many ND are parents, many/most of our ND DC have been to mainstream school and have jobs and are fully functioning in life like their ND parent.

I also think very many of us didn't know we were ND until we already had DC! I just had 30 years of wrong MH diagnosis and feeling like I was crap at all sort of things.

There’s definitely a genetic link which has been shown in studies. If you have 1 autistic child then the chances of a subsequent child with autism is 1 in 4 (or similar) which is a lot higher than the general population. This figure get’s higher if you already have multiple autistic children. Not sure if anyone has already linked the study but I’ll have a look for it!

Parents often only notice their own autistic traits after their child has been born.

im personally quite fascinated with the research linking Vitamin D. There was a study where autistic individuals were given very high doses of Vit D and there was significant change.

There was also research where pregnant women who were already mothers to autistic children were given high doses of Vit D throughout and the 1 in 4 chance of another autistic child was reduced to 1 in 20.

Wow! Yet another person who doesn’t understand genetics and science. And wants to make a judgement without engaging their brain.
so many people with ADHD self-medicate with weed. I won’t go into the reasons as I don’t think you have the capacity to understand.
ADHD is highly hereditary. The parents smoke weed and are likely undiagnosed. Weed does not cause ADHD.

"There was a 787%, exponential increase in recorded incidence of autism diagnoses between 1998 and 2018 [...] Rising diagnosis among adults, females and higher functioning individuals suggest augmented recognition underpins these changes."
https://acamh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcpp.13505

Continuation of a trend.
Also makes sense to me if the unusual amount of time parents spent with their children during lockdown made them more aware of their children's traits and gave them the time to research and consider getting a diagnosis. Then obviously, during lockdown they could not get the diagnosis, so the numbers spiked as it became easier to visit doctors again.

I'm also not convinced that it's solely an increase in diagnosis and awareness. I think people having children older could be a cause.

If I was autistic I would not be having children because having read some of the horrific stories on here I know I wouldn't cope with a disabled child .

Nice.

Not ignorant at all . It's my viewpoint just as you are entitled to yours .

What everyone else said re. less stigmatised now, greater awareness, more availability of routes to diagnosis, more support available therefore more incentive for diagnosis.

And, specific to your post covid query - lockdown was extremely traumatic for autistic people, I cannot emphasise that enough!!

Autistic people NEED their routine to function anything near normal.

Lockdown, and removal of routines/coping mechanisms, was essentially like a search light.

Anyone with autistic traits will have had them massively amplified. Hugely. And mild symptoms that could have been dismissed, suddenly became blatantly obvious.

Which explains more people, and their families seeking diagnosis.

If you’re going to quite claptrap like this you need to remember where you read it. Do you remember the autism and vaccines link that cause massive issues? It was completely untrue.
when quoting such utter rubbish that hasn’t appeared in a scientific journal please engage your brain first.

I found this a really interesting piece (disregard ckickbaity thread title including lies & conspiracies).

It’s not all down to increased awareness, as the rates of ASD with very high support needs (E.g. 24/7 care) have also increased massively. These are not kids whose needs would have flown under the radar 50 years ago.

https://www.thefp.com/p/the-autism-surge-lies-conspiracies

But true for me . You may be different.

Very interesting theories and I’m sure it’s a mixture of all these factors. I was talking to a friend who teaches in a very deprived London borough and they have had a complete explosion post covid of children with very profound needs when starting school. Non verbal and in nappies type needs. They have had to set up a whole separate class room where the children are essentially baby sat for the day and there is obviously no adequate provision for these children and they can’t participate in the curriculum. I presume that many will eventually have a diagnosis. Although SEN was fairly high in her school there was not anything like these numbers and It does suggest that lockdowns were a factor. As well as 15 years underfunding of early years intervention and children’s centres.

Bit of a spanner in all this and please don't take this as inflammatory, is there no such thing as a naughty kid anymore?
There's usually a reason for behaviour. It isn't always SEN or neurodiversity though.

Intergenerational patterns of parenting can lead to problematic behaviours in children.

Children who've not developed a secure attachment to their primary caregivers can display behaviour stemming from the issues in the primary attachment bonds.

There's a lot of work on ACEs (adverse childhood experiences) and the impact on behaviour. I'm oversimplifying but the more ACEs a child has the more likely they are to display

There's also parenting decisions and approaches that reinforce poor behaviour. Eg. If you give into tantrums when they're young then the child learns that's how to behave, if a parent refuses to accept that a teacher might have a good reason to give a detention and kicks off at school, the child learns their parents will challenge anyone who holds a boundary.

I don't like the word 'naughty' to label a child, but there's many reasons why behaviours display and the response needs to reflect the root cause.

They are kids who wouldn't have survived at the same rate 50 years ago, and probably wouldn't have/don't survive at all in societies without full access to modern medicine.

I don't rule out the possibility that autism is increasing, but us being aware of more autistic people surviving now cannot be assumed to be evidence of that.

@Eskimal
Are you joking!? You're suggesting that I need to learn about statistical evidence because I'm questioning the entirely anecdotal proposal that parents taking drugs can cause autism. Autistic people may be more susceptible to taking drugs but this has absolutely nothing to do with an increase in diagnosis of ASD. All statistical evidence points towards in being genetically inherited

Oh for goodness sake there are loads of famous, successful, top of their field people with autism and always have been.
The spectrum (yes i know its not) is much more encompassing. people that would would previously pass as NT with quirks attributed to be very clever or being male etc have a medical diagnosis. Being autistic has as much variation as not been autistic

Unfortunately the massive uptake in diagnosis it doesn't help those at the far end the spectrum who really are disabled by the condition. I notice that they also get lumbered with lots of "co morbidity" labels so people don't think autism is problematic.

I don't think there are any more but statically around 1 in 100 people are autistic. In the school I work in 4.3% of students are on the SEN register and nationally the average is 1.9%. I think we have slightly more because we have a good reputation for supporting SEN students. Waiting lists are huge because of covid and the lack of funding but a lot of children are also really good at masking, especially girls!

Girls are more likely to mask autism by copying what their friends do. I imagine being socially isolated for so long meant they couldn’t do this so when they were allowed back to schools, they’d missed a lot of the social development skills that neurotypical children had developed in that time.

I agree, a lot of kids mask so much at school but not at home so the parents experienced something different to the teachers. And because the parents would never have seen how they respond to an academic situation it was eye opening.

It's how society responds that I'm really interested in.

We're seeing that lots of people across all age ranges have been struggling with society in numerous ways. It seems We're getting better at identifying who those people are. So what do we do with that info? Rather than giving every individual adjustments (which may still be required) maybe we should look at how we structure society?

What happens if/when "NT" is the minority?

Having said that, I do struggle with understanding how much of the diagnosis criteria individuals would meet if we did restructure society so the norm was more "ND" friendly (obviously, its not going to address every specific case!)

Very good question OP - I have wondered this myself. One reason I think maybe approach to getting an assessment for diagnosis
My son is Asd now in his late 20's. As parents we had concerns when he was a toddler but it was when he started school that the teacher noticed certain traits in his behaviour and put us on the road to a diagnosis.he then went through assessment process with a multi disciplinary team led by community paediatrician. Who diagnosed him at 6 yrs old. I don't agree with other posts that say there was a lack of awareness in the 1980's / 1990's.my son got a lot of help ( no CAMHS in those days ) he got help through school, hospital, psychology. There were quite a lot of other kids in our small town who had asd too.
My sister went through the diagnostic process with her son about 6 yrs ago, the approach was very different. She applied on line for him to be assessed and got all the assessments reports done herself so that she could get on a waiting list for Camhs. He didn't see a doctor at all to start with, Until he saw a psychologist much later down the line. She did this all through the education authority not through a medical / school team. My son was seen by all members of the mdt team who assessed him over a six month period we were then given a diagnosis,
the difference with my nephew was that my sister was able to do an application saying she thought her son was autistic and then wait for a CAMHS/ EHCP assessment
My son was seen at home by the psychologist and then later at the hospital.
My nephew was diagnosed by parents reports and school/ remote assessments. A couple of face to face assessments by a psychologist in their office not in home environment
School reports but not from anyone who saw him at home or over a long period.
So I think that the initial application for assessment is a lot more parent centric and done online so easier to get an initial assessment underway.
I think that there are probably more diagnoses now because the initial process can be started by parent by using an online application.
The diagnostic criteria has been simplified in that it is the parent or carer that is in charge of initiating the process. Not a teacher or Health visitor.
25 years ago it wouldn't have mattered how many concerns I had at home about my son I could not get an assessment process started unless it was initiated by school or other services. The parent was not 'believed' unless it was backed up by school or health services,
Now a parent can initiate the process themselves by saying they have concerns and schools etc have to provide the assessments if parents ask for them.
Also has the description of autism changed ?
There used to be a diagnostic tool that described a ' spectrum '.
Autism seems to be a generic term now
In the past classic autism would have described a non verbal child with severe learning difficulties- through to higher functioning and aspergers.

.

I've recently been diagnosed as an adult woman in her sixties. It has helped me enormously to make sense of my life. I'm in a good place now and that helped create a feeling of "now's the time to get myself sorted", previously I just didn't have the bandwidth for it. I'm sure my brother and father are/were also autistic. We are very different, high achieving (obsessive), withdrawn people who don't fit in well. Now we know why.

I agree, there are more. It's not just about more awareness. When I started teaching 20 years ago you might have had 1 or 2 kids in the school who displayed 'unusual' behaviour. Now you have a few in every year group who are either diagnosed or awaiting diagnosis. My working theory is around increasing rates of survival of premature babies and increase in multiple births due to IVF. Often one child of the twin pair has an additional need.

Two possible reasons stand out to me as legitimate reasons for this:

1. Its not an increase in the number of children with autism. Its an increase in the number of children being diagnosed with autism. In the past certain issues would have been misdiagnosed or labelled simply as poor behaviour.
2. Autism is associated with parents being older in age. The age of when couples start families is increasing. Therefore you would expect more children with autism to be born.

The other reason of course is that
3) More children are being wrongly diagnosed with autism.

It is most likely to be something of a combination of all three. But I think that a lot of people prefer to assume that its (3) misdiagnosis, simply because if its (1) or (2) they will have to adjust their own behaviour / view of the world and frankly they don't want to or can't be arsed.

Life is becoming harder for people with ND and we're struggling to cope. We can no longer hide as well as we used to.