It’s an idiotic document which confuses correlation with causation. It implies that the rise in young ND people struggling with their mental health is because they are now getting diagnosed, when autistic people themselves almost unanimously describe what a relief diagnosis was for them and how it improved their self-understanding and ability to cope. The report offers zero evidence for the assertion that diagnosis is what is causing poorer mental health and it’s such a wild assertion that it would require strong evidence to support it.
Perhaps the researchers should have considered why so many more children are struggling to cope with being neurodiverse and therefore they/ their parents feel the need to seek a diagnosis and formal support. Why ND children are failed in far greater proportion by the education system and end up with very poor mental health.
There is plentiful, credible (unlike this report) research on this, for example:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37810599/
The vast majority of the children with school trauma, persistent or long term absences (almost 90%) are neurodiverse. 85% are autistic.
There is also robust research showing that appropriate support has a disproportionate positive impact on the outcomes of ND children in comparison to NT children, and that a lack of appropriate support has a disproportionate negative impact on ND children in comparison to NT children, i.e. it is like a magnifying glass. Dandelions can still thrive in hostile conditions, if you stamp on them you damage the flower but it can grow back. Orchids can grow into something incredibly beautiful but only with appropriate care. Without appropriate care they will wither and die. These are the ND children. And yet we have Governments and Local Authorities hell bent on denying ND children the support they require and now even recognition of their difficulties in environments designed for NT children, and then acting surprised when this results in severe mental health problems and/ or the children ending up out of school or work. It’s hardly surprising to anybody who has bothered to read the academic and medical research on the topic and one can, therefore, only assume that these politicians and other useful idiots have not bothered to do so.
This and other research make perfectly clear that it is the school system itself causing the problems for these children. They are being utterly failed and systematically denied access to an education that they can access.
The Government needs to accept that the “one size fits all model” of state education is the precise opposite of inclusive, and will never - with any amount of adjustments or ridiculous “bases” where children with opposite clashing needs are excluded to within the school - be appropriate for these children. The classes are too loud, too busy, and far too large. Then the children have to mask all day which is proved to cause mental health problems and burnout, and they can’t learn to their potential so their self-esteem is trashed on top of and compounding the difficulties they have due to their neurological condition. This is all well evidenced in copious research.
Nothing will improve until the Government sets up sufficient appropriate, separate schools which are need-specific (e.g. currently, many autistic children who are academic and well behaved but have sensory issues so need a calm environment and smaller classes have NO state schools they can attend at all, despite some of them being amongst our brightest and most gifted pupils, because all specialist schools tend to be focused on children wih behaviour problems or learning difficulties. And there aren’t even enough specialist places for the latter). Instead, this idiotic Government is doubling down on trying to remove children getting EHCPs and any way to move, trying to force even more of these children to remain in inappropriate mainstream state schools with chaotic environments and huge classes, and now trying to remove the children even getting a diagnosis so they can develop self-understanding of their strengths and difficulties and learn better coping strategies/ have the correct support for each individual identified by professional medical staff who actually know what they’re talking about, unlike most school SENCOs.
Blaming the issue on more children having their medical conditions diagnosed is absurd. Refusing them diagnosis will just mean they suffer in silence with no idea why they are struggling, like we used to in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Should we stop diagnosing people with dementia or epilepsy or other neurological conditions and assume that will make their effects go away? It’s a preposterous proposal, isn’t it?
Then these idiots try to present these ongoing attempts to make things even worse for these children than they are currently as “helping” them when it’s their own policies that are causing the problem. It’s Kafkaesque.