Prevalence of ASD

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I was listening to a lecture by Dr. Bennett Leventhal, a psychiatry professor at UCSF on Youtube. He discussed the prevalence of ASD in the population. He puts the number at around 2.5% (about 1 in 40)

This seems about right. When I consider the kids I grew up with in school, that would be the number I would pick. That would be my gut feeling. Now I am an old timer. And I am referring to a time 50-60 years in the past.

So the idea that we are in an epidemic of ASD, is in my opinion illusionary. ASD has been around for a long time.

Lecture Source: Autism Spectrum Disorder: Many Questions Many Answers

We did not see a lot of autistics that were locked up in institutions when we were growing up.

There are plenty of claims that prevalence (or incidence? I forget their definitions) of ASD is increasing. I'm undecided on the issue, in general. But I do find observations that autism is more prevalent in Silicon Valley to be pretty compelling. The argument is that the parents, possibly both employed in tech, may have subclinical traits but when mating, produce a higher rate of autism in their offspring.

If cases that earlier would have been institutionalized, nowadays live in the community and may reproduce, you could expect an increase in the population. Remember that the heritability of ASD is estimated at around 50 percent.

The prevalence of autism depends before all to the definition/diagnosis criterias of ASD. The actual definitions (DSM V/ICD 10-11) are eminently subjective. Using a more accurate definition, you may have another prevalence.

I agree with the 2.5% or 1 in 40, especially when you consider the wide spectrum of ASD. I’m sure there are tons of undiagnosed autistics, especially aspies who are my generation (30s) or older. Look at this way, if you went to school with 100 people, i’m sure there were at least 2 or 3 who were perpetual loners, very odd/eccentric or some combination. These types just were not diagnosed in the past because the more mild end of the spectrum wasn’t acknowledged.

I think that I am not autistic even when ASD occurs in 1 to 40 persons. I have no need of sameness, no speech delay, no prosopagnosia and sensory overloads, I think in words instead of pictures. I rather have personality disorders (such as schizoid or antisocial) and NVLD with predominant deficits in social skills. I am not so high functioning. I was very good in school but I am regretably poor in occupational area. I think that my condition has no links to the syndrome present in individuals described by Leo Kanner.

I was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, a pervasive developmental disorder. But someone in the centre specialised in autism said something like that that in America I would be diagnosed with NVLD. I prefer to talk about something which I named "aucorigia" (from "asutocontrast" and "originality") than about ASD. I think that main divisions in mental disorders is to aucorigic and non-aucorigic, not ASD and not-ASD (while not-ASD includes broader autism phenotype (BAP) or subclinical autism spectrum condition, nonverbal learning disability (NVLD), social communication disorder (SCD), childhood-onset schizoid, schizotypal, schizoaffective, schizophrenic disorders associated with poor social skills and being "odd", "peculiar"). BAP, NVLD, SCD, "schizodevelopmental" disorders are aucorigias and are more similar to ASD than to typical not-ASD disorders.

Aucorigia is more prevalent than ASD, it may occur in about 5% to even 15% of population. My parents have not aucorigia, my brother also has not it. But my sister may have a form of aucorigia or be just not "psychotypical" (clearly non-aucorigic) but also not aucorigic due to, for example, good social skills. She appears rather aucoroidal than aucorigic. Aucoroidia may be even more common than aucorigia.

Ill go with that. That given the broad way that autism is defined today that its about one in forty, and that it has been about one in forty for a long time. All of history.

I don't doubt that Silicon Valley could be a hotspot because of the reasons Bea gave (folks of certain mentality flock there and marry and reproduce etc).

But am open to the possibility that it could be slowly growing.

The last couple centuries saw the rise of railroads, cars, and planes, so folks move around more. And the rise of higher education. So folks no longer find mates in the same village but from hundreds of miles away, and often they meet in school. So it could be that humans with high IQ meet others of the same IQ and marry, and this results both in more geniuses being born, but also in more autistics being born. Just speculating.

Not today,but in the future society might become more accommidating to autistics and working them into the workplace and society. This might result in fewer staying virgins their whole lives,and themselves reproducing. So that might cause a further increase in autism. Autistics have not historically "bred like flies", and are not doing that now, but we all could start breeding with each other soon.