MEDIA WATCH

There are more of us than you thought

Is there an autism epidemic? Some say so, but the opinion of experts in the autism field is that it is not so. There is no evidence that there are any more autistic people as a proportion of society, but changes in diagnostic criteria, a greater awareness of autism in the general population and that society is becoming louder and brighter make us stand out.

Disclaimer: These figures are for children in the United States. The CDC (the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) does not at this time give results for adults. But given that it is not thought that autism rates have risen, just that detection and diagnosis have got better, there is no reason to believe that the rate of autism in adults will be different.

The figures are based on data gathered in 2020 and were released in March 2023.

Two years ago the CDC stated that autism prevalence was 1 in 44. A study in South Korea just before that using the same diagnostic criteria got 1 in 45, almost the same result.

In 2015, when Steve Silberman gave his TED talk, “The Forgotten History of Autism,” the figure was 1 in 68 and it had grown from 1 in 5,000 in 1975. We have growth from 0.02% to 2.78% in 2020, 139 times as many.

I welcome this. It shows we are getting better at diagnosing autism. The increase from 1 in 44 to 1in 36 is a 22% increase in two years, so I don’t think we have found the full number of autistic people, but we are getting there. I welcome this report as it shows things are getting better as far as finding autistics, especially those who mask, is concerned.

There is more research to be done. This figure shows that people have missed diagnoses in the past, but also they are being missed now as the figure is far higher than the number of people being diagnosed.