66.5 million autistics!! !! !! !! !!

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I posted something to this effect in an earlier thread, but I rewrote it for my blog and thought I'd repost it here, since I've done a better job of rewording it and my other one seemed confusing now I look back on it.

Sorry for the slight sarcasm in advance, but certain duplicate threads do seem to pop up over and over again (which is of course the nature of a large and growing forum, but the same questions or comments do get kind of draining). It's a shame certain inevitable topic threads aren't stickied so they can be resurrected in a single place. Anyways, I digress.

Boink!

I don't believe in statistics/assumptions unless they work to my favor.

I'm surprised no one's chosen "poo bah." That was my second choice after "flibbit."

Perhaps true for clinical cases, where there is impairment, but some think twice as many who just get by, Sub Clinical, but I give it a biais toward European, so a lower number.

Alex is working hard to get them all, but this takes time. At 3% 9,000,000 in the US.

A year ago you could not have convinced me I was autistic, many others come and deny it, but say this fits my life and explains everything. We have only been picking up on children, and then the worst cases, for a few years, those in college and older were missed, and I think a lot of the kids are missed, due to lack of funding. If it is not a problem for the teacher, no action, and many of us are quite and good students.

Support Wrong Planet, the best thing that ever happened to the autistic. It is not likely we will ever have anything else.

Very interesting.
Although I am surprised that there are 66.5 million people with ASD in the world. I thought that there would be less.

Oh...and I voted "Twang".

Of course, as they say, there are lies, damn lies, and statistics

Not that I'm doubting your number crunching, but it does seem kind of hard to believe. Perhaps it really is the case and outside of the western world, ASD's are overwhelmingly underdiagnosed (which is entirely possible and may even be likely)

At the same time, it depends on the extent to which the ASD/ASC criteria is stretched. If 1/100 people really do qualify for ASD/ASC diagnosis, but previously some only would have been labeled as "socially awkward" or such, then all of a sudden 66 million seems remarkably small, given the enormous number of people in the world that could be labeled as socially awkward (but not necessarily pathologically so)

I personally believe that the 1 in 150 stat is wrong. I am of the firm opinion that there are ASD's DX's being counted that are not ASD's but rather other conditions that resemble ASD's but in actuality are not. I don't know what the correct number would be though.

IMO AS is under-diagnosed (with many aspies labeled NVLD, Schizoid, Schizotypal, Anti-Social, Schizophrenic, ADD, etc) and so the actual number of people with ASDs is probably between 2% and 3%, and the number of people with the Broader Autistic Phenotype being around 5%.

On a side note, I feel that autism isn't limited to "pathology", so I suspect that the full spectrum probably ranges closer to 2-5%. Just my opinion, but if the spectrum follows a bell curve, the higher functioning are in greater numbers until you eek into "normality".

Schizophrenia I believe has a comparable 1% occurrence rate and is also proposed as a spectrum which ranges into "normality". Similar also for Bipolar.

You'll notice the trend here: Many developmental conditions (yes, schizophrenia is a neurodevelopmental condition) seem to range around the 1% mark, but also have many broader phenotypes.

The human condition doesn't understand what "discrete" and "label" mean.

Statistics (whether they work in my favour of not) are too superficial to be taken too seriously, IMO.

Twang! 1% Seems about right to me. Go to a major league mathematics faculty and IMO you're looking at >80% autistic genotype... [/deliberately contentious statement to provoke debate]