Is autism really on the rise?

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http://www.latimes.com/news/local/autis ... .htmlstory


Parents are purposely getting their kids mislabeled so they can get the help their kid needs from the sound of it. Does this scare you because does it make you wonder if your parents got you misdiagnosed in your childhood just so you get the help you need? What if it turned out you never had it and you actually had traits of it or something else? Would you have been mad at your parents about it for being lied to and would you have announced on here you don't have autism after all?

Here's a classic one:

After costly lawsuits from parents in the late 1990s, the district began aggressively identifying and treating children starting at age 3, when the law requires schools to take responsibility for those with special needs. The caseload has quadrupled over the last five years. The vast majority are deemed “high-functioning.”

You know this reminds me of the Great Leap Forward.

Various Chinese Bureaucrats kept on driving up their targets to basically make it seem like they were making record progress, but of course in reality everyone was just dying from starvation. Sounds like some parents are just desperate to get some cash

A few things I found interesting

I always thought the kids on the severe end got diagnosed because autism was clearly evident. It goes to show that even the severe cases have seemingly gone up.



A lot of misdiagnosis?

Trying to get the autism label to get services. Ehh...I think if you get labelled as autistic, it can change your life forever. Someone posted an pretty emotionally drenched thread where she was misdiagnosed with aspergers and she went her entire life thinking she had aspergers when she didnt.

For me, I thought I had social anxiety for a ton of years, my social problems were from my shyness not cause of aspergers. And this was a more minor flaw in labelling and it had a huge impact on my life. You tend to frame yourself around the labels and if the label is wrong, your treatment is likely not going very far plus the way you see yourself is not accurate.

One thing that is hardly ever mentioned, when there is talk of an autism epidemic, is that there was an editorial mistake in the 1994 DSM IV that allowed the largest percentage of Autism Spectrum disorders, PDD NOS, to be diagnosed with only one of the core triad of criteria for a diagnosis.

With the mistake a child could be diagnosed without any problems with social interaction, only potentially having repetitive stereotypical behaviors, and receive a diagnosis of PDD NOS.

6 years later they corrected the mistake; it is likely why some who had a previous diagnosis of PDD NOS as an autism spectrum disorder no longer had one years later, after the correction was made to the DSMIV revision, in 2000.

http://www.psych.org/MainMenu/Research/DSMIV/DSMIVTR/DSMIVvsDSMIVTR/SummaryofPracticeRelevantChangestotheDSMIVTR/PDDNOS.aspx

It's documented here on the American Psychiatric Association Web Site, but again, is hardly ever discussed in any mainstream discussion of the "Autism Epidemic" that mirrored the time frame of this major error in the DSMIV, in 1994.


Now fast forward ahead to 2013, with the DSMV. Currently in the DSMIV there are individuals with PDD NOS that don't have RSB problems, because only 2 out 3 of the core triad of social/communication/RSB criteria are required, but with the DSMV RSB is a core required criteria.

So, if those individuals currently diagnosed with PDD NOS, without RSB's, are re-assessed at some point in time after the revision goes into effect, they may be assessed in another disorder outside autism spectrum disorder, like the new separate social communication disorder included in the DSMV proposed revision.

Not only that, but the wording of the DSMV is a little confusing in it can be read to suggest general developmental delays are not part of Autism Spectrum disorder.

The DSMV organization has clarified that their intent is not to exclude those with co-morbid cognitive deficits, only to clarify that cognitive deficits are not the cause of impairments that are part of autism spectrum disorder.

I would think they would word it different in the final revision, to make that more clear, avoiding the confusion that occured in 1994.

From the time Autism was included in 1980, until present the DSM revisions likely have had a significant impact on diagnoses, and it looks like the next DSM revision may continue to have a significant impact.

One theory I have is that autism is on the rise becuase of rise becuase of our enviorment getting becoming more poulluted that it's changing the human brain somehow.
Now I would also go so far and say that autism is not bad or good it just depends on how server the case is and could be a terrible thing where the autistic person needs alot of support or it can be a great thing typically for someone who has asperger's.

Nah-- there aren't any more autistic people than there ever were.

What has changed is the way we deal with it-- some for the better, some for the worse.

For the better-- 150 years ago or less, a profoundly autistic child would have simply been labeled "crazy" or "ret*d" and warehoused in an institution somewhere, where he/she would have spent a lifetime throwing food, playing with bodily waste, and banging his/her head against the wall (literally and perhaps metaphorically as well).

If the child was lucky, and the family was wealthy. Where I was raised, such a child would have been labeled "tetched" (touched by the Devil) and hidden away in a back room or with isolated relatives, either kept concealed by shame or beaten into less frightening behavior-- or simply killed outright, no questions asked.

Hey-- Hans Asperger and Leo Kanner were looking at the same symptoms in the same demographic group. Asperger was trying to save "his" kids from the Nazis. Kanner was nice and safe in the USA; some theorize he was a Nazi sympathizer, at least on the eugenics front (Hitler got his ideas from American programs of the 20's and 30's, you know).

Half a century later, we use the terms "Asperger's syndrome" or "Asperger's type" to refer to high-functioning autistics, and "Kanner's syndrome" or "Kanner's type" to refer to low-functioning autistics. Originally, the only difference was in the words chosen by and the attitude of the researcher.

For the worse-- Society has become a lot less tolerant than it was in generations past. While we now commonly regard people of other races/ethnicities as equally human, we have grown to pathologize every minor deviation from some arbitrarily defined norm. "Normal" should really be referred to as "mode" (IIRC, "mode" refers to the most commonly reoccurring number in a list).

Hence people who used to be "quiet," "shy," or "a little eccentric" are now "high-functioning autistics."

There were no "Aspies" two hundred years ago. We were "quiet, strange children" who were taught to shut up and fit in and, like most children, apprenticed to a tradesperson at a fairly young age (or taken out and taught to do the chores of daily necessity). We were not "high-functioning autistics." We were "Paul-- he doesn't talk much, but they've made a damn fine blacksmith out of him." We were frontiersmen-- those who chose to forego marriage and family and instead went West where we could live by hunting and trapping (and often as not probably ended up married to an American Indian). We were "Mrs. John Farmer-- she don't have much to say, unless you're one of her chickens, but her kitchen is always clean."

We were also Henry Ford-- brilliant, but by all accounts not a very nice guy-- and, in my opinion, probably Mother Jones, too.

Before that?? Back in the day, low-functioning children were killed outright as a necessary matter or survival. A hunter-gatherer band could not survive if it carried those who would never be able to carry their own weight. High-functioning individuals were either made spiritual leaders, burned as witches, or driven out to fend for themselves or die of exposure.

My opinion, after a decade and a half of thought on the subject (and a few classes in social psychology, sociology, and anthropology and quite a lot of well-researched historical fiction).

Last edited by BuyerBeware on 15 Dec 2011, 5:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I think I know who you are talking about. It does sound like she had it in her childhood and she recovered from the symptoms. I don't think anyone should limit themselves due to a label. I don't think anyone should try and act Asperger's because of the label. Parents shouldn't let their kids use AS to limit what they can do and shouldn't be Asprger's meaning having more symptoms and exaggerating them and not even trying to improve. I don't think that is why the label is there. It's there to help the person improve and adapt.

Also if the child is mislabeled intentionally by parents, I don't think they should be telling the child they have that condition because it be a lie.