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Is Autism on the Rise?
April 28, 2008
It takes a long time to become young.
-Pablo Picasso
-Pablo Picasso
Theories about the cause of this rise also abound, identifying a wide range of environmental factors. However, Dr. Dorothy Bishop and her colleagues at Oxford University now are proposing a much simpler explanation �" that in the past many children with autism were misdiagnosed. Her article in the May 2008 issue of Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology, describes a research project where 38 teenagers who, as young children, were diagnosed as having a developmental language disorder. The researchers went back and re-diagnosed these children by interviewing them and their parents. The result was that fully one-third of these children were misclassified and, in fact, under current procedures, would have been considered to have some form of autism. Dr. Bishop concludes that while we should not assume that other factors are not still involved, it appears that a major cause for the increase in autism is simply changes in diagnostic criteria.
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Comments (4)
Displaying All 4 CommentsUnited States
In thinking further. As we were involved with the walk for autism, it reminds me of how autism had minimal funding until its incident numbers increased dramatically. Seemingly about the same time that ASD was included in the broad autism umbrella. Would be interesting to research further.
United States
I was wondering how much of the recent diagnoses of autism are due to the change in categorization of asperger's to autism spectrum disorder? It seems that when asperger's was reclassified as autism spectrum disorder otherwise known as "a form of autism" that the incident rate of autism grew exponentially. True or False and why?
Interfaith Community Care
Surprise, AZ, United States
I'm not really surprised at this research and, in fact, wonder if a lot of behavior, communication, cognitive disorders are not misdiagnosed all the time. For example, ADHD. We all know that many, many children with behavior issues were "labeled" or diagnosed with ADHD, or ADD years ago. Not so, but those issues were more about environmental, learning, cognitive issues. Not all children had ADHD.
The more we learn, the more we know, the better we get at understanding.
Traverse City Area Public Schools
Travesre City, Michigan, United States
My question is, if the increase in diagnosis for ASD is a result of mis- diagnosis then, have we seen a decrease in diagnosis for other communication disorders? It would likely play out in this way if indeed we have misdiagnosed. Is there any evidence that this is true?
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