60 sats \ 8 replies \ @026180d3a3 4 Apr \ parent \ on: The Rising Prevalence of Autism charts
The answer is more diagnosis. Whether they are correct or not...
I don't think that's the entire answer, but it's part of it. The allusion to possibly rampant overdiagnosis really interests me. Autism seems to have become something of a fad diagnosis for adults to hide behind.
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Autism, as an illness, has no existence without diagnosis. Take away the financial incentives it offers, and I suspect you will find "actual cases" drop acutely.
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That doesn't sound right. I've definitely met people who clearly meet the colloquial use of "autistic".
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How does what I've said preclude those cases?
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Autism, as an illness, has no existence without diagnosis.
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your point, here. There are plenty of people who struggle with something that we all call "autism".
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They present the symptoms. Whether they have it is another matter.
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Ok, that doesn't seem like a particularly important distinction. It's entirely possible they "have it" and we just haven't developed the right approach for clearly identifying it in the body.
I know you can't prove a negative, but saying definitively that it "has no existence without diagnosis" seems too strong. However, "has no known existence without diagnosis" would be fine as far as I know.
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It's the distinction between it being a have-able thing, versus a thing medically conjured into being. It's also the difference between it being a thing, and it being a thing emulated to get disability or benefits.
I know you can't prove a negative, but saying definitively that it "has no existence without diagnosis" seems too strong
Either way, if you can't diagnose a thing, you can't say anything about its existence in terms of disease. All you can say is "I see the following things."