Why is Asperger's so much more common these days?

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I know people will say that it's because it wasn't heard of years ago and all that, but I grew up in the '90s and even then it was like I was the only kid with an ASD in the whole school, or the most socially awkward kid. But autism and Asperger's was known about by the time I started school and when I was growing up. And any kid with any sort of delay intellectually or socially got noticed by teachers and were put in extra learning support groups to help them, so it's not like ASD was that hard to miss in children.

But these days it seems that nearly every parent I know has a child on the spectrum. I can imagine schools these days having more children with ASDs than they did back when I was at school.

So has ASD become physically more common these days?

The exams got easier to pass

I'm crap at tests and even I passed

One recent report says it's now 1 in 40 in the USA. https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/26/heal ... index.html

It's simply not.
Diagnoses is getting better, so a lot of people very good at masking have been getting diagnosed. Those who weren't as good at masking you likely wouldn't of seen as much.

And don't forget you were an aspie kid, I at least was so focused on just getting through every day I didn't even notice the level 2 kid and his aid in my class. I don't even remember most of the kids at all.

My guess is you didn't notice.

The professionals are realizing that women also have Asperger's.

^^^ Yeah they're finally realizing that it's not a "boy's" thing and are finally diagnosing women. Not to mention that at least in my case, I went in to the therapist's office for depression and she realized that I had autism and I got a diagnosis. So as more people come in for stuff like depression, professionals have more of a chance to notice autistic traits and test further.

I think one of the main reasons is that it's become increasingly more difficult for people to live up to the expectations of what is considered to be normal, because it's an ever narrowing concept with the emphasis on selling yourself as socially active at all times, so more and more of us are going to fall outside of that ideal.

I would have noticed if there was another kid with the same disorder as me, because I did focus a lot on the other children, and I was 8 when I got diagnosed so ever since then Asperger's was always on my mind and I spent a lot of time observing other kids. I even developed an interest in neurotypicality so I knew who was 'normal' and what 'normal' was.
There was a girl with ADHD at high school, and a girl with Fragile-X, and a boy had epilepsy, and some children had intellectual learning difficulties while others had depression, but I hadn't met anyone with an ASD. Everybody with these disorders seemed so much better at fitting in and being socially accepted (except maybe the girl with Fragile-X, she was a social outcast but she was a few years older than me so she wasn't in any of my classes). I was only level 1 Asperger's.

I didn't know anyone with Asperger syndrome or autism when I was growing up. When I was in the fourth grade, I did have one classmate who had epilepsy.

Another contributing factor is that the definitions for AS and Autism has been broadened, rather than new disability categories being made and as a result, includes more people. I honestly suspect that we have the same proportions of people with it and whatever else has been lumped under the autism spectrum but because of the broadened definition, the numbers appear to skyrocket.

Wonder how the prevalence keeps going up to such a large amount of the population being born.

I think,as with other diagnoses , there can be a fine line between something being diagnosed too little or too much. Certainly the very conservative criteria of just a few decades ago left many people with definite problems undiagnosed. At what point do you say something has a significant impact on someone in one or more areas? Can it be readily quantified ?

I think the same debate over over and under diagnosis could also be had for ADHD and bipolar.

It's because of less narrow criteria (for autism), and more awareness, I believe. And more awareness that females CAN present differently (though there are some women who present with both classic autism and evident Aspergers).

I would purport that most of the new people being diagnosed are on the "high-functioning" portion of it.

I would say on a higher(comparative) level of functioning rather than necessarily a high level of functioning (absolute). I would guess the average person on the spectrum is higher functioning than the average person 25-30 years ago plus.

Besides expanded criteria, I think schools and the world are more Autistic unfriendly in the that there is more group interaction expected and more sensory stimulation.

Another words some people that would not be impaired enough to get diagnosed then with the same level of autism would be obvious today.

Why is Asperger's so much more common these days?

Because you need a large army for a coup