The Truth Behind Rising Autism Rates

Autism rates in the U.S. have been spiking, but is this a case of awareness or are more kids being born autistic?


Read More:
Spike in Autism Numbers Might Reflect Rise in Awareness
“About one in 68 children in the U.S. is diagnosed with autism, according to the latest U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.”

Autism rates are up, but is it really on the rise?
“The number of U.S. school children placed in special education programs due to autism more than tripled from 2000 to 2010, to nearly 420,000. But a new study argues much of that increase likely came as educators swapped one diagnosis for another.”
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[Jefff]

I had all the signs of autism as a child but this was the 70s. I didn't want to be held, played alone, had speech and social issues in kindergarten. I sat and dug a crater size hole in my front yard with a spoon. If that was today, my butt would have been hauled into the doctor for a diagnosis. I had to take the long road in developing social skills and I'm still learning. I'm a US Air Force vet and college graduate.

[CodeDarkBlue]

I hate that people talk about autism like it's a disease that we should aspire to find a cure for. It's just a reflection of the diversity of human minds.

[mightza]

Honestly, a lot of social norms of non-western countries are seen as symptoms of autism by the west. For example, a lot of cultures see direct eye-contact too aggressive and as a sign of disrespect. Could the rise of autism also be attributed to the rise of diversity and classifying common traits of various cultures as symptoms of autism under a western lens?

[sc]

my dad works at the Christian Science Institute, also known as CSI. Autism is caused by watching to much porn and masturbating to much, he says you can cure autism with circumcision and corn flakes.

[neiltasker]

I was diagnosed with Autism and I later found out it was Ptsd.

[dvorapat]

Turn on the captions at 2:58
Someone added after this sentence _"autism is becoming more socially acceptable than intellectual disability"_ this: _"or_ _as it used to called, mental retardation."_ She never said that in the video.

[christophertaylor]

I am not convinced that these "disorders" really exist. Could it be that a lot of kids just need help with learning because they are kids? Some obviously do have special needs.

[TheMegalusDoomslayer]

Insurance companies aren't required to cover all medical issues.

[WandererOfWorlds]

The most important factor in the rise of autism is that the average age of parents, especially mothers, is increasing. But we can't make that point because that would be too politically incorrect.

[DevilDude]

It's probably all those memes that kids are doing these days.

[AbsolXGuardian]

Better diagnose. They are probably counting mirror cases too. It is a spectrum and it is are large.

[tixeright]

Clearly some people are very "autistic", and to the agree it impairs them from having a normal life. Since the "high-functioning" autistics are seemingly normal, with some anti-social behaviors, and a heavy enthusiasm for something in which they are usually very knowledgeable, it could be that a bunch of kids today are getting misdiagnosed, like with ADHD (because just maybe kids didn't evolve to sit down and shut up for 8 hour spans with little or no physical or social activity.) How bout we all diagnose each other with something, take some prescribed psychotropic or behavior modifying drugs,  and just claim SSDI? Also, things can change with age. Back when I was a kid, I used to test positive for dyslexia, and now I don't, and I have a very high aptitude for a spatial awareness.  I now test positive for other things, that I didn't test positive before, and maybe that's because I'm a car accident survivor, or maybe it's just cause I'm older, and if you put anyone under a microscope for long enough, you're bound to find something you can tweak with expensive therapies, or write a prescription for, even in what society for the whole of human history would have considered pretty normal people up till now. So yeah, is it really "rising awareness" or is that just a cover for the systematic "mind control" over ever an increasingly expansive populations of people who are being groomed to accept the Nanny-State as the Ultimate Authority?A long time ago, the base criteria of someone being mentally ill, was not whether or not they have demonstrably differing aptitudes in differing areas of learning, a place where we all would fit somewhere on a "spectrum" like in the age of "learning disabilities" and "standardized testing." But, whether or not we could reasonably determine "right from wrong" and our behavior presented known dangers to ourselves or others that could only be managed through drug, and cognitive-behavioral modification therapies, and in the worst cases, controlled segregation and/or restricted access to wider society.

I think it's more than possible that some of these cases are misdiagnosed, as we try conform human behavioral patterns into a very small box. And I think the shift of focus in psychology which happened in my own lifetime, from treating very obvious abnormal personalities types, towards trying to figure out everyone's cognitive prognosis is why there's so much social stigma placed on people with much less severe forms of "mental illness" or "learning disabilities", and why there is a "movement" to see that stigma "removed" from society. Mostly for things that should have never been stigmatized in the first place because they related more to distinctive emotional quarks, natural aptitudes, and personal philosophy, all things a person in a more narrative profession would associate with human personality, or character. And whatever happened to just accepting people as they are.

I'm usually a fan of scientific progress, but I haven't really been a fan of the let's throw a label on everyone we can and prescribe a pill mentality of psychology today which is backed by both big Pharma, and Big Government, and each for their own reasons, big pharma wants the money because greed is good, and big government wants powerful controls over how someone thinks and feels, and if such a thing is gained by promoting a culture of pop-psychology in which individuals voluntarily seek out these control substances for themselves, all the better. Going forward, it should be noted that the only difference between "modification" and "control" is a matter of perspective on whether or not something appears voluntarily, but many people are clearly impressionable, and are easily deceived, and so that line is extremely thin, because the next family of drugs being researched by big pharma isn't just for abnormal types, or for curving learning impairments,  their goal is to "improve" everyone, and yet, their target for whatever a human ultimately should be is wherever they arbitrarily set it, and there is no getting around that.

Anyway, if someone that is only mildly paranoid (and more than skeptical enough to balance out that tendency) thinks that maybe the psychologists and bureaucrats are the ones doing more harm than good to wider society these days, than just imagine how trippy the normal circumstances of today's 'SYSTEM' (in which we are all a part of) now appears to more delusional and much more paranoid types.

[culobandoolo]

yuck, now I've lost my appetite, I can't finish my ass burgers... should have gotten ass pizzas instead.

[ThePeacemaker]

The reason is greater awareness?

This sounds like a sponsored news story.

[DaneReidVoiceOver]

Eventually they'll conclude that we all have autism.

[ShawnRavenfire]

So we can drastically increase or decrease the number of people with any disorder just by changing the name of the disorder.

[lollsazz]

I think that the more complex our society becomes, the more conditions we're going to find, a s more and more people will struggle with the rising pressures. Someone born 100 years ago with autism might have been able to live by themselves, with not that much need to interact with other people, had a job that was easy enough to do, and people might just have thought about the person as a little unsocial, with strange humor

[Melissa]

In order to know the true rate of ASDs, they need to go out and find all the older adults who have it and were never diagnosed. They're out there. But no one seems to believe that or care, unfortunately.

[mimiboys]

I think a lot of "lighter" cases are being diagnosed too instead of just being called weird or socially awkward. My eldest son is autistic but high functioning and we have high hopes that if he maintains the medication that helps him with his high anxiety he will be able to be on his own and a functioning member of society. Autistic people have a lot to bring. They don't think outside the box, they LIVE outside the box and can often find solutions to problems that we wouldn't even start to think about.

[gybx]

I went to large schools from 1963-1976, was among thousands in the military, and 44 years of employment in large corporations.
I never met one person who exhibited these "autistic" characteristics.
Yet it is so prevalent today.
So, you really haven't answered the question for me.