Do you think there is an actual increase in Autistics or is it mostly misdiagnosis/self-diagnosis?

[Maker's Mark]

I think autism was underdiagnosed back in the day or was not considered a real disability. That weird nerd in the 80s that loved DND? Autistic. Your quirky uncle who loved trains? Autistic. But now we know more and are able to properly diagnose it.

 

[Yugica]

I've always found it fascinating that there are people who actively want to be associated with the label of autism, especially when it's teenagers.

Teenagers often claw for a sense of identity and to feel special, don't they? Being autistic is special in two separate ways, the way you mentioned and also in the way of being just different. I can remember a lot when I was growing up of my mom trying to get me to watch some junk on TV with autistic characters and their quirks or whatever else only for me to be completely disinterested. She's not autistic(nor claims to be so, to be clear), I was diagnosed with Asperger's in preschool and it was very obvious in my case. I always found the stereotyped characters on TV to be some kind of Flanderized joke. Taking some aspects a sperg might have and cranking them up to 11 so no nuance or subtly can allow for them to not grab attention.

I think in part all of the media more recently with various nerdy "autistic" characters on TV has played a part with people trying to positively identify themselves as autistic. As although they won't associate with the more comedic or retarded flaws of those they'll instead try to draw connections between them and the positive and unique aspects.
>"Oh my god, I'm so autistic, I watch like all of the lore videos for [game]."
>"I hate wearing wool sweaters so much, it's an autism thing."
Then there's also the aspect where they can excuse away certain behaviors or to get what they want. It's no longer that they don't like certain foods, now they can complain that their ARFID(a common thing with autistics) makes it a horrible experience for them. Won't you think about their poor disorder? You're being insensitive, bigot.

One thing I wonder about is whether parental drug use prior to conception play any part. Nearly everyone I know who has an autistic child is someone who I know to have used a lot of recreational drugs.

It may be the other way around. People predisposed to having autistic children are also predisposed to being into recreational drugs. Some of the neurological traits that autistic people have are enhanced sensations and enhanced emotions. This is why you'll see an autistic child screeching and crying if they hear a kind of noise they dislike or a loud noise. From what I remember the parts of the brain that transfer the information of our senses are enlarged(and it may have also had denser neurons, I can't remember) in autistics.

So the thinking goes: People who get more out of recreational drugs(because it affects them more strongly) would be more prone to using them and also the likelihood that their enhanced experiences are genetic and would contribute to an autistic child's neurology is there.

tbh I think over-exposure to the internet can induce it's own kind of autism and that's what leads people to self-diagnose as such when they otherwise wouldn't.

From what I remember isolation/solitude can make you emotionally more numb. If your mind adjusted to that and then suddenly you were thrust into being social then you'd expect them to have very strong emotional sensations(one of the traits of the 'tism), so I could see that.

 

[Niggsworth]

Yes and yes.
There are more 'tists than ever but there is also more misdiagnosis than ever before. Btw the 3rd Reich only gassed the severe autists

 

[Slap47]

I think autism was underdiagnosed back in the day or was not considered a real disability. That weird nerd in the 80s that loved DND? Autistic. Your quirky uncle who loved trains? Autistic. But now we know more and are able to properly diagnose it.

This is probably half of it.

The other half is welfare fraud.

 

[Hunter Hearst Helmsley]

I think the bulk of it is actually social anxiety. Social awkwardness as a result of fear, not from inability to comprehend social situations. I think it's becoming more common for a variety of reasons. A big one is that in-person communication is more rare because of technology. Also, because social structures are becoming incoherent. Families are split, churches and social clubs are retreating, populations are more diverse which means the social rules are more complex. I see a lot of people who CLEARLY can read and understand social situations attribute their awkwardness to being on the spectrum instead of just...this is scary and complicated because the world we are living in is totally incoherent and unnatural. If you read the ravings of a schizophrenic and they make no sense, the problem may not be that you're illiterate, the problem might be that the author is insane. If you can't comprehend how to behave in our modern social structures, you might not be autistic, the problem might be that our society is insane.

 

[ChefBourgeoisie]

I don't even think autism "exists". Let's get some background out of the way first though.

Americans' first introduction to autism in any significant way was a movie. Yeh, that movie. Dustin Hoffman acting like a card-counting super-powered tard. Until that point, in the late 1980s, it was practically unheard of. And then, just like that, everyone was talking about it. You'll find at least a few episodes of 60 Minutes and Nightline and the other newstainment shows talking about it, say, for the next 24 to 36 months about it. How did people react? Well, with an outpouring of fake empathy like they do for all newly popularized afflictions (and this despite the fact that institutionalization was mostly history at that point).

But they also found it sort of appealing. This retard had super-powers. Vegas jackpot super powers. In some ways, really hopelessly desperate people might wish they were autistic so they too could be like Rainman. And from there, everything sort of spiraled out of control. All the Munchausen-by-proxy Lite soccer moms had something new to diagnose their children with. All the grifty helicopter parents had a new label to get their kids an extra 30 minutes on the tests so they didn't flunk. And all the unsalvageably dorktastic nerds had an identity movement (or the potential for one, at least) to rally behind.

From this, from our collective retarded imagination, we created this sort of gigantic urban myth that took on a life of its own, but one absolutely no one had any sort of interest in debunking. Jackasses and imbeciles will no doubt argue with me that it's an objective phenomenon that can be measured, but if you go back 100 years in time you'll find any number of other "sciences" that are considered to be bizarrely mistaken or even outright fraudulent today. Because you and others believe autism is real, you see it everywhere, in all sorts of behaviors and personalities that are fully within the normal range of variability. Convincing you that it's not real is probably impossible, I won't try, but be aware that there are those like me who think it's utter horseshit and we're silently assessing whether you can fuck up our lives or careers before we roll our eyes when we hear you use the word.

 

[Otterly]

This is probably half of it.

The other half is welfare fraud.

In the uk, the benefits system is set up so that some things trigger a gateway to a whole lot of other benefits. Certain diagnoses (statements) for children are one of them.

Because you and others believe autism is real

Remember that we put labels on stuff for convenience rather than reality. There’s no such thing as a disease called psychopathy but people can display psychopathic traits. And those are culturally bound and time different too,
Autism isn’t ’a disease’, it’s just what we call a set of presentations. Like fever isn’t a disease, it’s a consequence of infection and other things.
‘Autistic traits’ are a reproducible and consistent feature of some very severe syndromes. An example of genetically caused autism would be something like Rett syndrome, or FG syndrome (which, as already pointed out is what Kim Peek, who rain man was about, actually had.)
In those cases you’ve got a person who is basically incapable of functioning normally and who ALSO displays a set of traits we label as ‘autism.’ This is the severe end, 24 hour care stuff. It’s not much fun.
Then you’ve got your Chris chans, who can sort of get along but they’re vulnerable. They again don’t have ‘a disease that is called autism’ they have a variety of problems caused by a variety of things which include autistic traits.
Then you’ve got most people on here who are basically ‘a bit eccentric.’ They’re odd. They think differently. Some of these people might fit into the box of Asperger’s before it was redrawn. The fact that the DSM just redraws boxes should tell you how subjective this stuff is. This set of people often feel a bit adrift in society, but it’s not so much that they’re abnormal as that they’re not matching the current zeitgeist. They do not have ‘a disease.’
The people who have the level of malfunction where they need 24 care have a disorder. We should certainly try to find what causes autistic behaviour in those disorders becasue it sucks

Sleep is probably a factor as well and that’s getting worse for kids in the digital age. Synapse pruning occurs during late childhood and adolescence and it doesn’t happen well in kids who go on to the autistic and or schizophrenic and all sorts of other disorders. They end up with brains that are differently wired because they don’t get the deep NREM sleep that’s needed to prune.
All our modern world is fucking our brains. Screens, social isolation, disruption to sleep patterns, drugs (legal and not.)
I really believe that social media and current culture also drives the formation of personality disorders.

 

[Swingletonthesimpleton]

It's possible they're misdiagnosed or self diagnosing. Only thing I'm certain of is I'm definitely not misdiagnosed.

How did I get found out? Well from what i've been told it went like this: kindergarten teachers tried talking to me. And I stared at them like they killed my mother. Given a Thomas the tank engine toy and left alone? I'd immediately deem it my friend and have conversations with myself and it. And loud noises made me scream bloody murder.

It took less than 30 minutes to get diagnosed by a doctor. They took one look and said "yep. this one's retarded."

I still don't like conversations but I'll at least not shut down anymore if I have to converse. And I like heavy metal so I've gotten over my fear of noise.

If you haven't had those 2 happen in some way in your life, you're probably not autistic

 

[Fount of BadSpeak]

I think it's a complex topic that isn't necessarily about autism in and of itself, but is a variety of factors being labeled as "autism". How does one tell the difference between an autistic kid that struggles to communicate normally and a kid whose single mother parked them in front of a screen for their whole childhood and has no socializing capabilities? How do you tell the difference between a guy who is passionate about a hobby, and a guy who has an autistic fixation on something? Is that guy shy because he is shy, or is he autistic and struggling to interact? Even the so called "experts" aren't very capable at differentiating between autism and other factors, which is probably part of why the "autism spectrum" isn't really taken seriously anymore.

Overall I don't see autism as a significant societal problem, and the problems in regards to "autism" that most people are upset about are due to children developing incorrectly due to poor parenting, poor discipline, poor socialization, overexposure to electronics, overexposure to entertainment, poor education, etc. In short, people are trying to make autism a boogeyman to explain away many of the symptoms of a sick, degrading society that neglects our children, and to take away accountability from the parents (usually single mothers) who let screens and government employees raise their children.

My friend is a prime example of a guy who seems autistic, but frankly I think that's more a result of his father dying while he was a child and his mother letting him live in front of a computer or game screen during his most important formative years because it was easier for her. Yeah, he's successful and I like him, but I don't think he will ever fix his personality defects as a result of being a borderline shut in during high school. Most people would probably class him as autistic, but I think that's just a way for people to handwave away much more profound reasons that are much more uncomfortable to address.

 

[Free4Ever]

<Ashkenazi high-IQ claim quote>
This is not true. Vox Day has conclusively disproven this claim.

Isn't IQ originally a measure designed specifically to sort soldiers into specific (potential) ranks?
IQ has never struck me as pertinent to life in any kind of "normal" or natural society.

 

[Iron Jaguar]

IQ has never struck me as pertinent to life in any kind of "normal" or natural society

Then you are wrong.

 

[Free4Ever]

It's both.



It's all of this. Especially the first and second points.

Back when research into autism was first being done, one of the predominant theories for its cause was something called "refrigerator mothers" a.k.a. neglectful mothers who didn't show their children any warmth, or affection. Turns out while that's not true for autism, it is true for something called Reactive Attachment Disorder, or RAD for short. The symptoms of that condition overlap a ton with the ones of autism such as poor eye contact, lack of emotion, or empathy, strong attachments to objects, etc.

With the rise of technology, and its plague on society, the fact most of natural selection has gone out the window, and that treating our environment like a shithole is finally coming back to bite us in the ass, more, and more people are raising children who have a higher chance to be disabled either genetically, via poor parenting, by the environment itself in vitro, and horrifyingly, sometimes all of the above.

The rates also gone up because there's been more diagnoses of it in women now like @Android raptor said.

"In vitro" means "in a lab". That only pertains to kids grown from a tube (*shudder*),
after they leave the balls and before they're artificially implanted (IVF).

Y'all looking for:

Nirvana.

 

[Coldsteel the Hedgehog]

I think a lot of modern autism diagnoses are a result of observing what happens to children who suffer childhood neglect or have other untreated developmental disorders like ADHD during childhood. These can cause symptoms that heavily mimic autistic criteria like issues socializing, not understanding social norms, stunted emotional development/lack of maturity, etc. For a lot of people, it's easier to say "they're autistic" or "I'm autistic" than it is to admit that your parents completely and irreversibly fucked you up to the point where you'll probably never be normal.

I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to let them share the label, though. The types of neglect and developmental issues that resemble true autism are caused during very young ages during critical periods that cannot be fully compensated for, ever. Whether someone as born autistic or they were "made" that way through their early childhood doesn't really matter insofar as both people will have similar issues that are more or less intrinsically a part of them for the rest of their lives, and both people often respond well to the same types of support programs and guidance. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck -- it might as well be a duck, even if it's technically an underpopulated taxonomical family only populated by a single species.

 

[Lovely Kin]

Yes and no, in the past and still in some countries, autism meant someone who would scream the same thing over and over, throwing literal shit, and punching themselves screaming. Those who were more "high functioning" were often seen as that weird guy, like "Oh there's Todd again, he's in his own world talking about trains." "Susan is a bit strange, but she has a good heart. She likes everything EXACTLY in order like how her blinds are opened, and everything evenly spaced out." Now they are diagnosed with autism, instead of it being reserved for the one who smears his feces everywhere. Of course, there was also Asperger's which got removed because "he's a Nazi" and lumped in with the rest of autism.

I do also believe there are people who are just weird. They aren't autistic, but the autism label gets thrown onto them and/or they self diagnose themselves. It's like how someone who gets nervous will diagnose herself with anxiety, when in reality, she gets nervous like the rest of us do and panics underneath stressful situation. It's not anxiety she has, but you can't question her or you will get shouted down and treated like you're ignorant. Autism is one of those things where someone will slap themselves with a label instead of getting a proper diagnosis.

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

Autism is caused by over exposure to the internet and modern day games, as they purposefully bombard underdeveloped and unsuspecting minds with over stimulation. Those minds become addicted to the rush of the over stimulation, which also becomes numb to the sensation, like a long-term coke head needing more powder to chase the same high.

The cure for autism is sitting in a quiet, calm field or on a beach and doing nothing for hours, days and weeks on end. Following the way of the Buddha, cures autism.

 

[ZsaZsaBinks]

Autism isn’t ’a disease’, it’s just what we call a set of presentations. Like fever isn’t a disease, it’s a consequence of infection and other things.
‘Autistic traits’ are a reproducible and consistent feature of some very severe syndromes. An example of genetically caused autism would be something like Rett syndrome, or FG syndrome (which, as already pointed out is what Kim Peek, who rain man was about, actually had.)

@Otterly
All these “Syndromic forms of ASD” are not ASD. They are called ASD because they have overlapping symptoms, or parents beg for the diagnosis to get more services at school. Sometimes, children with these disorders get misdiagnosed with ASD before they get the correct diagnosis. Fragile X, Rett, FG, are all their own genetic glitches, and many of them are underdiagnosed.

 

[booklover]

It may be the other way around. People predisposed to having autistic children are also predisposed to being into recreational drugs. Some of the neurological traits that autistic people have are enhanced sensations and enhanced emotions. This is why you'll see an autistic child screeching and crying if they hear a kind of noise they dislike or a loud noise. From what I remember the parts of the brain that transfer the information of our senses are enlarged(and it may have also had denser neurons, I can't remember) in autistics.

I also believe that some people on the spectrum use substances because it gives them some semblance of a social life.

 

[ZsaZsaBinks]

@ChefBourgeoisie A lot of people won’t agree with you, even on this site, particularly the incels who call themselves that to justify why they can’t get laid.

That being said, ASD is a strange phenomenon. Most disorders, like Down’s, Fragile X, and cystic fibrosis have been known about for a long time and didn’t need a movie for people to know about. And they have a proven cause and stayed at the same rates throughout history. But ASD wasn’t well known until a movie about it came out, and suddenly, it became increasingly common. Rates are still rising to this day. Even the anti-vax types, despite being a thing for decades, haven’t made the numbers go down.

A common theory is that parents and teachers see behaviors in children that they think are stereotypical, and send them to see a ASD therapist. The therapist is at a clinic which is owned by private equity, which works diagnose as many kids as possible to get money from the parents’ insurance. Many behaviors seen in these children resolve with or without treatment. The reason you see so many young people with ASD “having normal lives” is because the diagnosis has expanded to include people who would have always had normal lives.

 

[Circus peanut]

There’s definitely been a trend of mistaking (genuinely and not) behavioral quirks for ASD, usually in the misguided attempt to be another flavor of different. It’s been popularized by TikTok.
I recall an employee describing her “hyperfixation” (read: normal interest) on a hobby of hers as an “autistic trait” of hers. She was just a bit younger than me. I weep for the youth

 

[grump]

I've seen the theory batted around that the rise is at least partially due to to the rise of co gender nerd culture and women entering technical fields that suddenly have large numbers of near or somewhat more autistic socially impaired men and women together in close proximity where they end up marrying and having children. The theory also goes that one way to protect against this is in the case of men to marry the ditzy socially extroverted hot chick who cares more about her nails and partying than linux distros and Steven Universe lore.