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Autism Rates

rjequalsmj

rjequalsmj

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Federal health officials announced Thursday that the rate of cases of autism and related disorders in the U.S. now stands at roughly 1 in 88 children.

The new figures from the CDC are up from a previous estimate of 1 in 110, and suggest the increase is largely a result of wider screening and better diagnosis. The Washington Post explains that the 1-in-88 figure means that autism is nearly twice as common as it was thought to be only five years ago, and that the disorder likely affects roughly 1 million American children and teens.
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I realize that screening and diagnoses are better now and that a lot of people in the past just lived with high functioning autism, but that rate seems really high. Personally, because autism awareness is so high and the lobby so powerful, I feel like we've reached a point where it is over-diagnosed. Obviously this is completely anecdotal but I have worked with multiple kids with autism diagnoses that clearly were not autistic. I think some kids are being misdiagnosed because an autism diagnosis provides hope for parents that an intellectual disability diagnosis (formerly mental retardation) or something else does not.

Either way I think awareness is extremely important because their are a lot of things that can be done to improve outcomes particularly for young children. Mostly I just posted this cause it is pretty amazing to think (if the numbers are accurate) that in the not so distant future over 1% of our entire population could be autistic.
 
a big thing is people are having children at older and older ages today than ever before. obviously it is very well known that as maternal age goes up that there is a greater risk for nondisjunction of chromosome 21 leading to down's syndrome
 
Deacinphilly said:
a big thing is people are having children at older and older ages today than ever before. obviously it is very well known that as maternal age goes up that there is a greater risk for nondisjunction of chromosome 21 leading to down's syndrome
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but this is about autism, not down's syndrome. are the increases in risk at about the same rate? (i honestly have no idea)
 
Plus down syndrome is easily detected early in pregnancy unlike autism. Although some studies have confirmed a link between parental age and autism.
 
DeacHoops said:
but this is about autism, not down's syndrome. are the increases in risk at about the same rate? (i honestly have no idea)
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a lot of children are misdiagnosed and have one or the other. also there is an increasing incidence of children with down's syndrome to have a dual diagnosis of both down's and autistic spectrum disorder. although kids with down's syndrome are typically more sociable, there tends to be some overdiagnosis by saying a child with down's syndrome has autism as well.
 
It's a condition that's on a spectrum, not binary, so I feel like it's tough to talk about with too many generalizations. I would guess that many similar cognitive disorders like that have had an increase in diagnoses over the past decade or so.

Autistic are usually pretty awesome.
 
rjequalsmj said:
Plus down syndrome is easily detected early in pregnancy unlike autism. Although some studies have confirmed a link between parental age and autism.
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agreed that it is obviously tougher to diagnose autism since there is no specific scientific markers or definitive tests, a lot of it is inexact
 
seventwofour said:
It's a condition that's on a spectrum, not binary, so I feel like it's tough to talk about with too many generalizations. I would guess that many similar cognitive disorders like that have had an increase in diagnoses over the past decade or so.

Autistic are usually pretty awesome.
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beat me to it
 
So does everyone have a little autism in them?
 
I've got about 30 preschoolers with autism on my public school speech therapy caseload. In that group there are certainly both kids who do not have autism but have been diagnosed with it and will grow out of any delays and kids who are low functioning and would have been diagnosed as mentally handicapped not too long ago who I would not consider truly autistic. There is certainly an over diagnosis issue but those new numbers are still seriously crazy.

Oh and as far as the question does everyone have a little autism in them? I would say yes!
 
Autism spectrum disorders appear to be poorly understood and likely quite complex wrt causes. I want to partly blame the pesticides other industrial chemicals we're so awash in these days.


I offer as iron clad evidence of my speculations the honey bee. A little non-lethal exposure and their swarm mentality (social networking, cooperation, communication, etc.) go to pot: link.


[yes, I'm serious about the speculating but, obviously, not the proof.]
 
I think they said tonight on the news that the CDC plans to reassess what qualifies next year as they've overcompensated up to now.
 
Deacinphilly said:
a big thing is people are having children at older and older ages today than ever before. obviously it is very well known that as maternal age goes up that there is a greater risk for nondisjunction of chromosome 21 leading to down's syndrome
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Recent studies suggest the father plays a far greater role here than previously suspected.
 
The good thing is that more and more wealthy individuals have kids diagnosed with Autism. They're able to provide a lot of funding to support the cause. I'm on a Board of an autism charity. It's really sad in some ways and really amazing in others.
 
saw this article on the front page of the paper. kinda touched me and made me think a lot about how folks take things for granted. for what it's worth, a friend of mine worked as a camp counselor for her summer job through college. she was a public health/human development major. she said that so many of the autistic kids are absolute sweet hearts. the neat thing about her summer camp program is that it practices inclusion by mixing autistic children with non-autistic campers. thought i would share. nothing more.
 
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