I'm too lazy to read the whole thing, did it account for us having great services for students with autism so parents with autistic children move here? Though now that I say it, that's probably not a huge/relevant number...

The explosion of autism diagnosis nationwide is more a function of modern medicine going beyond "that boy just ain't right" in their approach to behavioral analysis.

If you don't recognize it you don't report it... We're better off knowing what to look for.

From what I've heard, Pennsylvania is better... But that's just anecdotal

I'd be interested in reading the whole study. There are a few things I can think of that could contribute to it.

First, kids who have other types of issues are more likely to be screened for autism because they are already on the radar. Next, have the numbers of children on the spectrum grown or is this a reflection of the broadening of the spectrum and more children being identified?

5 fold seems like a lot but I think, I graduated from school in the 80s and I didn't know anyone in "regular" school who was autistic. Fast forward 25 years and I had a nephew who was identified when he was 3 and began receiving services. He struggled in school but just graduated from college and is now a teacher. If they had not caught it early, he might never have gotten where he is today.

When he was growing up, there were always a few kids, girls and boys, who were identified as being somewhere on the spectrum.

I never got properly diagnosed not until 14 months ago in 2021 & it was a latent diagnosis. Growing up I kinda knew I was different from the other kids & in school as well . It was chalked up to me being an old soul in a kid’s body. I only wish that I was diagnosed sooner rather than later because then I could have utilized the services .

It makes you wonder how many kids on the spectrum were simply not mainstreamed and received help and services, or just shipped off to institutions.

I taught in NJ for years. We had a family move from overseas to enroll their autistic child in school here. NJ has a very high bar for educating special needs children.

Or, more often, were just labeled as problem children.

r/science is usually pretty good at spotting the issues with studies like this, and 'lo the very top comment:https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/10mrbrl/comment/j653ida/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

When I was a kid in the early 80s the ONLY people called autistic were the incredibly small minority with Savant Syndrome ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savant_syndrome ). This changed over time (to be clear: for the good) to the modern spectrum diagnosis. But I really don't think there's an easy way to control for this change in a study, and it always feels kind of reckless when researchers do. You throw something like this out there and people start panicking about vaccines or drinking water or whatever for no reason.

Its honestly something our school district struggles with. We have a reputation for great services, which is awesome, but then you become a magnet for it, and the costs and accommodations needed start spiraling.

If my kid was a decade older, he'd probably have been diagnosed with "pervasive developmental disorder - not otherwise specified" because he wouldn't have fit into any of the other boxes. Did the study not group all of the previous diagnoses that are now grouped under ASD?

It’s kind of what Trump said about COVID, but the other way around: “if we stop testing right now, we'd have very few cases”.

It’s not that we have a higher percentage of the population on the spectrum, it’s that other places let many many more people go undiagnosed.

Always more to learn, wonder when the turning point was https://www.inquirer.com/philly/health/20111017_Researchers_find_autism_more_common_with_low_birth_weight.html

This. As I understand, most kids who are picked up are on the higher end of the spectrum. These are the kids who, when I was a kid in the 70s and 80s, were labeled as being problem kids in one was or another: tantrum throwers, behavioral problems, underperformers, overly sensitive, or just plain weird.