At Discover’s big-idea blog The Crux, Emily Willingham has a really interesting post about the prevalence of autism—is it actually increasing, or is this really about medical definitions and increased attention?
This is a topic we’ve talked about here on BoingBoing before, most recently back in March, when Steve Silberman offered some scientific evidence that suggests the ostensible increases in autism prevalence are “caused” by more accurate diagnosis.
But Willingham’s piece adds a couple of new, interesting details to that still-emerging story. Being more aware of neurodiversity makes it look like there’s more neurodiversity than there was before we were aware of it. And that was true even for the guy who invented the diagnosis of autism.
Leo Kanner first described autism almost 70 years ago, in 1944. Before that, autism didn’t exist as far as clinicians were concerned, and its official prevalence was, therefore, zero. There were, obviously, people with autism, but they were simply considered insane. Kanner himself noted in a 1965 paper that after he identified this entity, “almost overnight, the country seemed to be populated by a multitude of autistic children,” a trend that became noticeable in other countries, too, he said.
…by 1953, one autism expert was warning about the “abuse of the diagnosis of autism” because it “threatens to become a fashion.”
Read the rest of Willingham’s piece, which includes a detailed look at several different studies that back up this view of autism with evidence. It looks like the majority of the “increase” in diagnoses can really be attributed to the process of diagnosis itself.
Image: 74/365 – autism awareness., a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from macbeck’s photostream