California ASD figures:

[yurt1]

This is cut and pasted from the Schafer Autism Report:

California Reports:
2007 New Autism Cases
Sets Records

From Rick Rollens.

California added 4,143 new cases of professionally diagnosed full syndrome cases of autism to its system according to a report just released this week by California's Department of Developmental Services (DDS). This is during the most recent 12 month reporting period from January 1, 2007 through December 31, 2007 . What took 22 years to accumulate in the system in raw numbers of persons with autism now takes just 12 months. Twenty years ago in 1987 there were 2,778 persons with autism in the system, by the end of 2007 there were 36,952.
In 1971 California added full syndrome autism to its list of eligible conditions that could qualify for admittance into California's eligibility based developmental services system. During the next 22 years, from 1971-1993, the system grew to serve some 4000 persons with full syndrome autism.
During the 4th Quarter of 2007 alone, there were 1,236 new children added to the system with full syndrome autism -- an all time record number of new cases for a Quarterly reporting period in the 39 year history of California's system. It was the recent 3rd. Quarter of 2007 that brought in, for the first time ever, more then 1,000 new intakes (1,060) in the history of the system, followed now by another record number (1,236) of new intakes during the 4th Quarter of 2007. Autism now accounts for 59% of all new intakes entering the system that also includes children with mental retardation, epilepsy, and cerebral palsy.
Last year, for the first time ever, California's developmental services system served more persons with autism then cerebral palsy, and by the end of the first quarter of 2008, autism will surpass epilepsy as the number two condition served by California's developmental services system. Historically, autism, prior to 1980, accounted for just 3% of the total population and ranked a distant fourth among all the eligible conditions.
The most telling about California's autism epidemic is the age distribution in the autism population. Whereas with all the other conditions that are served in the system where between 55- 60% of those populations are over the age of 22 years old, in the autism population only 15% are over the age of 22.
Eighty-five percent of the autism population is under the age of 21, 78% under the age of 18, and over 1 out of 4 persons with autism in the system is between 6 and 9 years old. No children under the age of three are included in the DDS reports.
Due to the strict eligibility requirements to enter California's developmental services system, the director of DDS estimates that California's developmental services system serves less then 20% of the autism and autism spectrum population in California.

Probably a bit of both imo. Interesting that California figures are only covering less than 20% of the autism spectrum population.

It is very interesting yurt - I wonder if in 10 years time we'll find out why autism seems to be exploding like this? or is it just that in our childhood, children like ours were bunged out of sight in homes, and treated as hopeless cases. I remember reading that the actor Richard Burton has an autistic daughter, who has lived all her life in a home. Probably nowadays, with the right interventions, she could have lived a fuller life.

Supposedly the cases at ds1's school (SLD/PMLD) have also rocketed as well though.

I think I read somewhere that Silicon Valley - in California, right? - is an autism hotspot, presumably because loads of computer nerds (i.e. people that Baron-Cohen would call "systemizers") move there for work, marry other computer nerds and have kids who are genetically more predisposed to autism ...

That's high functioning though - so more likely to get a different diagnosis. The article isn't all that clear - but it looks like its recording the 20% of children who are able to access developmental services- which I think needs an ASD (rather than AS) diagnosis. I have come to the conclusion that Simon Baron-Cohen has never met a severely autistic child

I find all the diagnostic terms a nightmare to understand. I am assuming the article means as said above 20% meet the DSM criteria for autism and not 'just' PDD NOS. I also find it hard to understand why criteria for Aspergers say no clinically significant delay in language when very few of the children studied by Asperger were speaking normally at the right age - although unlike Kanner autistics , they did sort of get there in the end. Asperger called his syndrome Autistic Psychopathy just to confuse things !

Time for some wine.

Most of Kanner's were verbal though They were nowhere near as severe as the group the term has come to mean (although confusingly I have seen 'kanner's' being used to represent HFA as opposed to AS with severe being god knows what.

It's a problem with interpreting the data.

Rit