I think it’s because autism is on a spectrum and it’s only recently (I think) where people who are deemed “high functioning” have been getting diagnosed, leading it to seem as if there more autistic people then there once was.
how many older people had ‘quirky’ habits or collected weird things or was ‘not very chatty’. Not saying everyone who has one of these is on the spectrum but there are signs in people who are older. It just was usually just explained away and people found different coping mechanisms.
Historically autism was only studied on boys and particularly white boys. The DSM criteria which is what you need to meet to be diagnosed was predominantly focused on what traits and presentations on how autism looks in boys.
Autism presents very differently in girls and then there is the intersectionality of cultures aswell.
Now the DSM has been updated to start to recognise more accurately what autism looks like in different people and so more people are being diagnosed.
Because of all of this a lot of women were missed as children because there wasn’t the research or understanding there. So women in their 30s and up are just being diagnosed now because they were missed as children.
It’s not that there is ‘more’ autistic people they have always been there. There is just more awareness understanding and historically there has been an under diagnosis rather then there now being over diagnosis.
Only research up until the last few decades was mostly on low functioning white boys.
Same way how it seems there are more trans, gay or adhd people. Or even interests like emo, decora or drag culture.
The Internet has lead to many more people finding out about themselves who would have gone their wholes lives undiagnosed and many going through extra challenges that only makes them suffer.
There are more cases of people being diagnosed as autistic, but that can largely be attributed to a few factors
We have a better understanding of autism in general, and that has lead to us realizing that there are a lot of people who have exhibited signs who may have gone undiagnosed
Younger generations in general tend to be more open about addressing mental health. You’re not going to be diagnosed as autistic by a medical professional if you never go see one, and people are just more willing to do that than they were in the past
Related to the above points, as more people are open about their mental health, and with the spread of information via the Internet, people are seeing others who exhibit similar signs to their own and realizing “oh, I might be autistic”
Autism has only been a diagnosed condition since 1942. At first the definition only covered the most severe cases. As we’ve come to understand it, we’ve treated it as a spectrum of issues. A lot more gets classified as autism today than was in the past.
Another big issue is past generations had a fear of having their child labeled. They often knew their children had issues, but considered it worse to have treatment on a person’s record than it was to go untreated. I don’t get it, but I’ve seen it first hand, and heard a ton of stories about it.
It was always there, we just didn’t label it and tried to ignore it.
“Oh, Little Tim? He’s weird, but he’s good with the sheep.”
“Mary is very good at spinning, sometimes she’ll just sit and spin and spin and spin all day long.”
“Oh, that’s just how the Johnsons do things.”
“Grandpa always got the same thing for lunch after church, every single week, forever. Since before him and Nana got married.”
Even older, some people suspect that “changelings” were actually autistic kids. Kids who knew too much, but didn’t learn how to speak until later than the other babies. Etc etc etc Even OLDER, having someone who’s REAL quick at picking up patterns is great for hunting and gathering. (See also: ADHD people take fewer berries from more bushes over a wider range, resulting in the same amount of berries gathered, but doing less “damage” to singular bushes.)
Grandpa’s have entire rooms dedicated to model ships in bottles or trains but yeah autism is definitely brand new 😆
It’s becoming more diagnosed. As we learn more about how autism effects men and women differently – most criteria in the past was based on white boys.
It’s also more opening talked about, many suffered in silence. I wasn’t diagnosed until I was an adult looking back with the knowledge we have today it was painfully obvious I was but the data wasn’t there in the late 80s early 90s.
Decades ago, many people diagnosed as autistic would be put into hospitals and ‘therapies’ that harmed the autistic individual more than helped them. It wasn’t common to be as accepting of it as it is today. Diagnoses would often not be given to individuals becauase of the stigma against it. Now that it’s been more heavily researched and procedures have changed, attitudes towards it have also changed and people aren’t as scared to get diagnosed if they presume symptoms.
we’ve always existed. hell, i’m only 29 and i got formally diagnosed at age 22, after years of being told i was just a “troubled”/misbehaving kid no one knew what to do with. i was punished and mocked, even by grown ass adults, for my symptoms. looking back, it was SO fucking obvious i was autistic the whole time and that i really wasn’t just “choosing to be difficult”.
so many of us have similar stories, our behaviours being chalked up to bad behaviour, and previous generations were just thrown in asylums or forced to feign normalcy as best they could.
Until recently, the less obvious cases weren’t diagnosed while the more obvious cases were thrown into institutions where general society wouldn’t interact with them. Said institutions are now rightfully recognized as being cruel.
It is not fully understood but there are a few factors that are widely accepted as contributing, but there are likely more reasons we are yet to uncover.
people are having children much later in life on average. when having children older, there is increased risk of complications, birth defects, and other issues including autism.
we are much more aware of autism and much, much more likely to diagnose someone with it today than in the past, in particular for higher functioning people. many high functioning autistic people simply were not diagnosed at all in the past. Bill Gates has famously said he would likely have been diagnosed with autism if he were born today
TLDR: Neuroscientific designations and definitions shifted with the research and data. There’s no more autism (and Asperger’s). There’s autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
There’s talk of neurodiverse or typical which isn’t a disorder – just traits. Think of this as the bell curve of neurology – bell curve like how IQ or many data sets get standardised.
Neurology studies human cognition. They put all our traits on a graph and found the bell curve. The normative range of traits is neurotypical, traits that are a bit out of range (where range is the individual’s ability to comfortably function or is different to the normative) it’s neurodiverse.
When the affects to a person are so influential to their day to day well being they fall in the autism spectrum disorder range – diagnostically. That takes a combination of traits that need support, but within the spectrum which traits and how much support one needs still varies. So even amongst people who say they’re diagnosed with autism/ASD – it can be very different things in practice/reality for them. In past the only variation to severe autism was Asperger’s – functional but obvious lack of social skills – now there’s more knowledge of traits that fluctuate, and evidence social skills can be learned and mask the other traits etc. Leading to the current state of neuroscience.
If you’re unfamiliar with the IQ bell curve analogy, everyone has intelligence (like everyone can think – has cognition – in neurology). The median/average IQ is then 100 on a bell curve (the defined centre/normative IQ). Generally normative IQ (if memory serves) is 70-130 (imho, I shall explain), below 70 implies some support needs may exist and above 100 may imply some gifted traits (above average). If memory serves genius is still above 145 (according to Mensa) so I’m vaguely estimating that 100-130 part as above average…google it for a real IQ bell curve analogy. I just kinda picture neurodiverse as off centre but not ASD, like some people have below or above 100 IQ but are not actually having challenges/gifted/genius. How far above or below IQ I can’t say so yea just illustrating that.
Hope this helps – I’m not an expert but as one neuroscientist and psychiatrist explained it to me it’s best to stay away from thinking old terms of disorders. We are all just collections of personality traits in different strengths and dominance/recessive presentations of those traits – it’s all a spectrum essentially. Neuroscience just caught up and takes time for mainstream to catch up to research. That also includes neuroscience to become distilled into psychiatry and then to psychology, before laymen. There’s a lag and confusion (I’ve experienced the ‘experts’ learn this as it unfolded over the past 21y – peoples prognosis/diagnosis change with the terms not the people per se).
We all have cognition so in some way we are neurotypical/diverse, and laymen confuse that with ASD traits easily sometimes – not always.
My grandpa, by today’s standards, would’ve been diagnosed without a doubt.
He was deemed eccentric, and people thought he was weird his whole life, because he’d have outbursts when he got overstimulated, ate the same meals each day, and would only ever talk about entomology.
There were a lot of people like him, who ended up being labeled as oddballs, who probably would’ve been diagnosed early on if they were born in the last few decades.
Excellent question. Autism has a label used to be reserved for cases of severe delay or pathology, and is now more generally applied and better diagnosed. Oddly enough, Plato is arguably the father of the concept—he described an ideal society where “gold souled” rational thinkers ruled and “silver souled” leaders-of-men simply convinced other people of our ideas. Based on what he’s written, the odds are very high that (a) he was autistic, and (b) what he was describing as “gold souled” was and still is mild autism. Of course, this doesn’t mean he was right—the existence of Elon Musk proves that some of us are cunts who should not be running anything.
It used to be believed that autism, a childhood condition, could remit. The mild social ineptitude (“Asperger’s” symptoms) that these people had in adolescence wasn’t really noted, because it’s not restricted to people with ASD, nor is it clinically severe in most cases. We now know that autism is lifelong, though often it doesn’t present with any traits that would be considered pathologies—the autistic children who became highly functional but socially awkward adults remained autistic. Also, there’s nothing wrong with an autistic brain except for the fact that it’s rarer and that the world isn’t designed for it. We are far better at some things that neurotypicals, and we are worse than others.
Here’s where it gets strange and sad, though. As we discover that autistic people are more common than we thought—probably 3-7% of the population—we are also finding that these people face lifelong social disadvantage. They’re unfairly reviewed on jobs, they’re often not hired at all for “cultural fit”, and their quirks are often interpreted in the most unfavorable way. Although some autistic people can beat the trend and become charismatic, it’s far more common that they face a lifelong, undocumented social disadvantage, that they might have never been aware of since most are undiagnosed, that was long attributed to personal character but that we now know (because we understand neuroscience) isn’t and never was.
This doesn’t answer every question, of course. We don’t really know if “autism” is one condition or several, and we don’t know why there is such a range of severity. There are also several axes of impact—social disadvantage, sensory divergence, meltdown risk, executive function—and we don’t understand fully why some people are only affected on one axis/
1930’s Germany didn’t treat them very well, adults oft found themselves lobbed in death camps, children when they were found and they were sought were gassed under the Aktion T4 programme – of which is why the term ‘ aspergers ‘ has fallen out of favour for it is understood Hans Asperger was one of the doctors that identified autism in children to send them to their deaths
But all through history we have had instances of individuals of whom through invention have changed the direction of humanity, to ever wonder who these people really were given what is reported of them?
How many are nonverbal and in diapers at 20? Needing to live in a care home? I keep hearing that autism is somewhere between 1 and 10 to 1 and 33 in my area but nearly all of the kids I’ve met with autism and verbal, can use the. bathroom, live independent lives and end up with jobs and married with kids. All variations of normal.
It’s become a fashionable diagnosis. One of my grown sons has Tourette’s. Firm diagnosis. Recently he asked if it wasn’t possible that it was a mistake and he actually had autism. Nope. What do you want me to say? Tell people whatever you want, but it’s not autism.
When I was a kid, almost no one got tested unless it was obvious and affecting their grades. I’ve also recently learned that the parameters have changed, so more people are considered autistic, that wouldn’t before.
More awareness and better at diagnosing. I’m pretty sure there were autistic people and kids before the blooming of internet. In my neighborhood,there were at least 4-5 cases of “weird” kids,”crazy” man,…that they would be called autistic nowadays.
We weren’t treated. We were treated like shit and beaten into submission or shunted into asylums or prisons. Most autistic folk become hermits to some degree.
There’s better testing/screening for it now, and people are more aware of it, so they seek testing/screening more. There aren’t more autistic people than there used to be; we’re just getting diagnosed more than we used to. A lot of people who would be diagnosed autistic nowadays historically would’ve just been called “eccentric”, or something to that effect.
As to why autistic people exist in the first place… well, I don’t know if anyone knows for sure. This is just speculation, but since one of the main features of autism is the tendency to hyperfixate on a particular interest to the exclusion of other things, my guess is that autism exists to provide human communities with specialists — people who are extremely skilled and focused at a single specific thing. I could be way off the mark there, though.
In the past, they were just considered weird, odd, eccentric (if they were wealthy), quirky, unfriendly, or were called the R-word in severe cases.
Because the diagnostic criteria changed you can’t actually know precise historical autism rates. But even in the last 10 years, there has been a sharp and steady increase in autism rates implying that there probably has been a consistent increase in autism over time that is different than doctors merely recognizing it and making the diagnosis more often.
Lots of good points in this thread about autism being hand waived away as just a person being “weird.” Something else I will point out is kids used to die more than they do now and at young ages. As our population grows and more humans are surviving into adolescence and adulthood the more obvious these populations are. The same argument can be made about why there are so many more gay people than there used to be. There’s just…more people.
So we simply know more now. One big thing is that several years ago we learned autism is genetic. So this causes a couple different kinds of people being diagnosed.
If youre older and never been diagnosed because they didnt know anything at the time, you might go get checked out if you learn a younger family member has been diagnosed. While its typically virtually impossible for them to access resources so late in life, they get a form of closure and get to finally know whats actually wrong with them. Most likely throughout their lives they may have been treated as crazy, obsessive, or just plain weird. So learning the reason and being told its okay is a massive relief for these people.
If you were diagnosed with autism at as a child and you grow up and have children, youre going to keep an eye on them for any signs they might be autistic because you know its genetic.
There’s more research done on autism, more focus on it in academia and the media now than ever before. The more screening you conduct for a certain health issue, the more cases you’re likely to find. It’s a basic concept in epidemiology.
It’s just like the theory of people “all of a sudden” becoming left-handed. In reality, they used to force left-handed children to write with their right hand back in the day. If you look where they stopped this practice, the data of left-handed people skyrocketed. This isn’t because of a random phenomenon.
I was born in 1962. Looking back, I can think of a number of kids who nowadays would probably be diagnosed as being on the spectrum. Some of them were just a little ‘different’, some were a lot different, and several of them were just classed as mentally disabled. I suspect it’s about the same number as now.
yes, there were always this many. but we were not good at diagnosing them. they were mostly seen as weirdos and cut out of social life for the most part.
Autism has always been this common. What happened was we drastically improved our understanding of this condition, which allows us to catch cases we couldn’t identify before.
Autism isn’t just “general weirdness.” The brain itself is different.
I always wondered if I was. They didn’t test for that. I hate being touched, eye contact, being around people. I had collections. Memorized things. Wasn’t social. Even my wife touches me sometimes and I’m uncomfortable. Dad taught me to fake it and I was good at sports so that helped. So I just think there wasn’t a name for it you were just “weird”
Misdiagnosis due to massive lack of understanding in the medical world, which is actually more common than you think. Medial science is not and likely will never be absolutely perfect.
I was having this conversation with my daughter, I am 67. Looking back, I can remeber people in my life who I thought were weird, Now, I realize they were probably autistic. I think it is just that we have more knowledge
The rise in diagnoses in the last few decades is due to two main factors
Better research which has allowed psychiatrists to understand and recognize the signs and symptoms to issue a proper diagnosis, whereas before those autistic individuals may have been misdiagnosed or just written off as “special.”
A general diminishing in social stigma for having the condition, which encourages people to actually seek diagnosis for themselves or their children, other family, friends, etc, whereas before those individuals may have been either ashamed or afraid to do so.
It’s like how atoms have always existed, but it took until 1803 for them to be discovered and proven.
On the flip side my son is level 3 autistic, and 28 years ago when I was in school he wouldn’t have had the therapies and help to go to class with nuerotypical kids. They used to put special needs children in separate rooms or buildings away from the other kids. Now they have better therapy so that those kids who need more help can go to class. He’s really quick on his interests and has gone from almost nonverbal to using sentences since starting kindergarten this year, as well as being a grade ahead in math
My dad was most definitely undiagnosed autistic. My sister, who is older than me and was able to spend more time with my dad’s mom, has stated she very much was as well (and my sister actually has a psychology degree).
I very much am as well and didn’t know it until just a couple years ago (I’m about to be 31).
Autism has been around probably forever, but only recently more understood and diagnosed. And even then it’s still not completely understood.
And if you’re note a 5 year old white male, you still often go undiagnosed.
It’s a fad where everybody who is socially awkward is self-diagnosing as autistic, and because the state of the world and technology is making everybody more socially awkward, it’s really taking off.
As with all fads, there will be a loud contingent of people who think everybody has always been autistic and now they can finally admit it or something.
When I was a kid (I’m 53), psychologists thought I had ADD. They didn’t know exactly what I had, because although I had emotional issues, I was very intelligent. I found out I was on the autism spectrum when I was 30.
Autistic people, in ages past, would have been seen as “quirky” or “odd” or even “slow”
In the Middle Ages, there was the myth of Changelings. A little baby would be sometimes replaced with a “Fairy” child at a young age. The replacement baby would be rather strange. I’m quite sure those myths stemmed from babies who were autistic. Autism doesn’t tend to present itself until age 2 or so.
Back in the day, being autistic meant you dad beat the shit out of you until you acted normal enough. You were disrespectful, a problem child, etc.
A person with ASP may not be able to understand why, but they do learn certain behaviors result in severe punishment and develop better masking.
Masking combined with little knowledge (autism wasn’t described until the 1940s) means a lot of them fly under the radar. Also, back then not being in perfect mental health was almost as bad as being gay. You kept that shit to yourself and bottled it up.
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I think it’s because autism is on a spectrum and it’s only recently (I think) where people who are deemed “high functioning” have been getting diagnosed, leading it to seem as if there more autistic people then there once was.
how many older people had ‘quirky’ habits or collected weird things or was ‘not very chatty’. Not saying everyone who has one of these is on the spectrum but there are signs in people who are older. It just was usually just explained away and people found different coping mechanisms.
Historically autism was only studied on boys and particularly white boys. The DSM criteria which is what you need to meet to be diagnosed was predominantly focused on what traits and presentations on how autism looks in boys.
Autism presents very differently in girls and then there is the intersectionality of cultures aswell.
Now the DSM has been updated to start to recognise more accurately what autism looks like in different people and so more people are being diagnosed.
Because of all of this a lot of women were missed as children because there wasn’t the research or understanding there. So women in their 30s and up are just being diagnosed now because they were missed as children.
It’s not that there is ‘more’ autistic people they have always been there. There is just more awareness understanding and historically there has been an under diagnosis rather then there now being over diagnosis.
They were just undiagnosed. It is not usually a handicap, just a deviation from the norm.
Only research up until the last few decades was mostly on low functioning white boys.
Same way how it seems there are more trans, gay or adhd people. Or even interests like emo, decora or drag culture.
The Internet has lead to many more people finding out about themselves who would have gone their wholes lives undiagnosed and many going through extra challenges that only makes them suffer.
There are more cases of people being diagnosed as autistic, but that can largely be attributed to a few factors
We have a better understanding of autism in general, and that has lead to us realizing that there are a lot of people who have exhibited signs who may have gone undiagnosed
Younger generations in general tend to be more open about addressing mental health. You’re not going to be diagnosed as autistic by a medical professional if you never go see one, and people are just more willing to do that than they were in the past
Related to the above points, as more people are open about their mental health, and with the spread of information via the Internet, people are seeing others who exhibit similar signs to their own and realizing “oh, I might be autistic”
RFK, Jr. promises an answer to your question by September
It’s on a spectrum now. Bigger umbrella. Now 3/4 of redditors are autistic.
Yes, it’s always been common. We just had different names for it in the past and recognized the people as “weird” instead of, you know, autistic.
Autism has only been a diagnosed condition since 1942. At first the definition only covered the most severe cases. As we’ve come to understand it, we’ve treated it as a spectrum of issues. A lot more gets classified as autism today than was in the past.
Another big issue is past generations had a fear of having their child labeled. They often knew their children had issues, but considered it worse to have treatment on a person’s record than it was to go untreated. I don’t get it, but I’ve seen it first hand, and heard a ton of stories about it.
It was always there, we just didn’t label it and tried to ignore it.
Autism has always been highly prevalent. People who were more impacted were warehoused away from the public from childhood on.
They’ve always existed.
“Oh, Little Tim? He’s weird, but he’s good with the sheep.”
“Mary is very good at spinning, sometimes she’ll just sit and spin and spin and spin all day long.”
“Oh, that’s just how the Johnsons do things.”
“Grandpa always got the same thing for lunch after church, every single week, forever. Since before him and Nana got married.”
Even older, some people suspect that “changelings” were actually autistic kids. Kids who knew too much, but didn’t learn how to speak until later than the other babies. Etc etc etc Even OLDER, having someone who’s REAL quick at picking up patterns is great for hunting and gathering. (See also: ADHD people take fewer berries from more bushes over a wider range, resulting in the same amount of berries gathered, but doing less “damage” to singular bushes.)
Grandpa’s have entire rooms dedicated to model ships in bottles or trains but yeah autism is definitely brand new 😆
It’s becoming more diagnosed. As we learn more about how autism effects men and women differently – most criteria in the past was based on white boys.
It’s also more opening talked about, many suffered in silence. I wasn’t diagnosed until I was an adult looking back with the knowledge we have today it was painfully obvious I was but the data wasn’t there in the late 80s early 90s.
Decades ago, many people diagnosed as autistic would be put into hospitals and ‘therapies’ that harmed the autistic individual more than helped them. It wasn’t common to be as accepting of it as it is today. Diagnoses would often not be given to individuals becauase of the stigma against it. Now that it’s been more heavily researched and procedures have changed, attitudes towards it have also changed and people aren’t as scared to get diagnosed if they presume symptoms.
we’ve always existed. hell, i’m only 29 and i got formally diagnosed at age 22, after years of being told i was just a “troubled”/misbehaving kid no one knew what to do with. i was punished and mocked, even by grown ass adults, for my symptoms. looking back, it was SO fucking obvious i was autistic the whole time and that i really wasn’t just “choosing to be difficult”.
so many of us have similar stories, our behaviours being chalked up to bad behaviour, and previous generations were just thrown in asylums or forced to feign normalcy as best they could.
RFK jr will answer that for you shortly.
VACCINESS
MICRO PLASTICS
GMO food
Or they have a name for stuff that has always existed.
Until recently, the less obvious cases weren’t diagnosed while the more obvious cases were thrown into institutions where general society wouldn’t interact with them. Said institutions are now rightfully recognized as being cruel.
It is not fully understood but there are a few factors that are widely accepted as contributing, but there are likely more reasons we are yet to uncover.
people are having children much later in life on average. when having children older, there is increased risk of complications, birth defects, and other issues including autism.
we are much more aware of autism and much, much more likely to diagnose someone with it today than in the past, in particular for higher functioning people. many high functioning autistic people simply were not diagnosed at all in the past. Bill Gates has famously said he would likely have been diagnosed with autism if he were born today
Many parents proudly label their children. It’s much easier than to believe their children are weird
TLDR: Neuroscientific designations and definitions shifted with the research and data. There’s no more autism (and Asperger’s). There’s autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
There’s talk of neurodiverse or typical which isn’t a disorder – just traits. Think of this as the bell curve of neurology – bell curve like how IQ or many data sets get standardised.
Neurology studies human cognition. They put all our traits on a graph and found the bell curve. The normative range of traits is neurotypical, traits that are a bit out of range (where range is the individual’s ability to comfortably function or is different to the normative) it’s neurodiverse.
When the affects to a person are so influential to their day to day well being they fall in the autism spectrum disorder range – diagnostically. That takes a combination of traits that need support, but within the spectrum which traits and how much support one needs still varies. So even amongst people who say they’re diagnosed with autism/ASD – it can be very different things in practice/reality for them. In past the only variation to severe autism was Asperger’s – functional but obvious lack of social skills – now there’s more knowledge of traits that fluctuate, and evidence social skills can be learned and mask the other traits etc. Leading to the current state of neuroscience.
If you’re unfamiliar with the IQ bell curve analogy, everyone has intelligence (like everyone can think – has cognition – in neurology). The median/average IQ is then 100 on a bell curve (the defined centre/normative IQ). Generally normative IQ (if memory serves) is 70-130 (imho, I shall explain), below 70 implies some support needs may exist and above 100 may imply some gifted traits (above average). If memory serves genius is still above 145 (according to Mensa) so I’m vaguely estimating that 100-130 part as above average…google it for a real IQ bell curve analogy. I just kinda picture neurodiverse as off centre but not ASD, like some people have below or above 100 IQ but are not actually having challenges/gifted/genius. How far above or below IQ I can’t say so yea just illustrating that.
Hope this helps – I’m not an expert but as one neuroscientist and psychiatrist explained it to me it’s best to stay away from thinking old terms of disorders. We are all just collections of personality traits in different strengths and dominance/recessive presentations of those traits – it’s all a spectrum essentially. Neuroscience just caught up and takes time for mainstream to catch up to research. That also includes neuroscience to become distilled into psychiatry and then to psychology, before laymen. There’s a lag and confusion (I’ve experienced the ‘experts’ learn this as it unfolded over the past 21y – peoples prognosis/diagnosis change with the terms not the people per se).
We all have cognition so in some way we are neurotypical/diverse, and laymen confuse that with ASD traits easily sometimes – not always.
Is this RFK Jr’s burner account?
My grandpa, by today’s standards, would’ve been diagnosed without a doubt.
He was deemed eccentric, and people thought he was weird his whole life, because he’d have outbursts when he got overstimulated, ate the same meals each day, and would only ever talk about entomology.
There were a lot of people like him, who ended up being labeled as oddballs, who probably would’ve been diagnosed early on if they were born in the last few decades.
Excellent question. Autism has a label used to be reserved for cases of severe delay or pathology, and is now more generally applied and better diagnosed. Oddly enough, Plato is arguably the father of the concept—he described an ideal society where “gold souled” rational thinkers ruled and “silver souled” leaders-of-men simply convinced other people of our ideas. Based on what he’s written, the odds are very high that (a) he was autistic, and (b) what he was describing as “gold souled” was and still is mild autism. Of course, this doesn’t mean he was right—the existence of Elon Musk proves that some of us are cunts who should not be running anything.
It used to be believed that autism, a childhood condition, could remit. The mild social ineptitude (“Asperger’s” symptoms) that these people had in adolescence wasn’t really noted, because it’s not restricted to people with ASD, nor is it clinically severe in most cases. We now know that autism is lifelong, though often it doesn’t present with any traits that would be considered pathologies—the autistic children who became highly functional but socially awkward adults remained autistic. Also, there’s nothing wrong with an autistic brain except for the fact that it’s rarer and that the world isn’t designed for it. We are far better at some things that neurotypicals, and we are worse than others.
Here’s where it gets strange and sad, though. As we discover that autistic people are more common than we thought—probably 3-7% of the population—we are also finding that these people face lifelong social disadvantage. They’re unfairly reviewed on jobs, they’re often not hired at all for “cultural fit”, and their quirks are often interpreted in the most unfavorable way. Although some autistic people can beat the trend and become charismatic, it’s far more common that they face a lifelong, undocumented social disadvantage, that they might have never been aware of since most are undiagnosed, that was long attributed to personal character but that we now know (because we understand neuroscience) isn’t and never was.
This doesn’t answer every question, of course. We don’t really know if “autism” is one condition or several, and we don’t know why there is such a range of severity. There are also several axes of impact—social disadvantage, sensory divergence, meltdown risk, executive function—and we don’t understand fully why some people are only affected on one axis/
1930’s Germany didn’t treat them very well, adults oft found themselves lobbed in death camps, children when they were found and they were sought were gassed under the Aktion T4 programme – of which is why the term ‘ aspergers ‘ has fallen out of favour for it is understood Hans Asperger was one of the doctors that identified autism in children to send them to their deaths
But all through history we have had instances of individuals of whom through invention have changed the direction of humanity, to ever wonder who these people really were given what is reported of them?
It’s the victim Olympics.
How many are nonverbal and in diapers at 20? Needing to live in a care home? I keep hearing that autism is somewhere between 1 and 10 to 1 and 33 in my area but nearly all of the kids I’ve met with autism and verbal, can use the. bathroom, live independent lives and end up with jobs and married with kids. All variations of normal.
It’s become a fashionable diagnosis. One of my grown sons has Tourette’s. Firm diagnosis. Recently he asked if it wasn’t possible that it was a mistake and he actually had autism. Nope. What do you want me to say? Tell people whatever you want, but it’s not autism.
When I was a kid, almost no one got tested unless it was obvious and affecting their grades. I’ve also recently learned that the parameters have changed, so more people are considered autistic, that wouldn’t before.
More awareness and better at diagnosing. I’m pretty sure there were autistic people and kids before the blooming of internet. In my neighborhood,there were at least 4-5 cases of “weird” kids,”crazy” man,…that they would be called autistic nowadays.
We weren’t treated. We were treated like shit and beaten into submission or shunted into asylums or prisons. Most autistic folk become hermits to some degree.
Scientists are unsure if it has always been this common or not
There’s better testing/screening for it now, and people are more aware of it, so they seek testing/screening more. There aren’t more autistic people than there used to be; we’re just getting diagnosed more than we used to. A lot of people who would be diagnosed autistic nowadays historically would’ve just been called “eccentric”, or something to that effect.
As to why autistic people exist in the first place… well, I don’t know if anyone knows for sure. This is just speculation, but since one of the main features of autism is the tendency to hyperfixate on a particular interest to the exclusion of other things, my guess is that autism exists to provide human communities with specialists — people who are extremely skilled and focused at a single specific thing. I could be way off the mark there, though.
In the past, they were just considered weird, odd, eccentric (if they were wealthy), quirky, unfriendly, or were called the R-word in severe cases.
Because the diagnostic criteria changed you can’t actually know precise historical autism rates. But even in the last 10 years, there has been a sharp and steady increase in autism rates implying that there probably has been a consistent increase in autism over time that is different than doctors merely recognizing it and making the diagnosis more often.
Lots of good points in this thread about autism being hand waived away as just a person being “weird.” Something else I will point out is kids used to die more than they do now and at young ages. As our population grows and more humans are surviving into adolescence and adulthood the more obvious these populations are. The same argument can be made about why there are so many more gay people than there used to be. There’s just…more people.
So we simply know more now. One big thing is that several years ago we learned autism is genetic. So this causes a couple different kinds of people being diagnosed.
If youre older and never been diagnosed because they didnt know anything at the time, you might go get checked out if you learn a younger family member has been diagnosed. While its typically virtually impossible for them to access resources so late in life, they get a form of closure and get to finally know whats actually wrong with them. Most likely throughout their lives they may have been treated as crazy, obsessive, or just plain weird. So learning the reason and being told its okay is a massive relief for these people.
If you were diagnosed with autism at as a child and you grow up and have children, youre going to keep an eye on them for any signs they might be autistic because you know its genetic.
There’s more research done on autism, more focus on it in academia and the media now than ever before. The more screening you conduct for a certain health issue, the more cases you’re likely to find. It’s a basic concept in epidemiology.
I still think the word aspegers genuinly contributed to a large amount of people refusing to get checked.
Maybe genetics. I’m no doctor. RFK Jr. Is not fit for health advice
It’s just like the theory of people “all of a sudden” becoming left-handed. In reality, they used to force left-handed children to write with their right hand back in the day. If you look where they stopped this practice, the data of left-handed people skyrocketed. This isn’t because of a random phenomenon.
I was born in 1962. Looking back, I can think of a number of kids who nowadays would probably be diagnosed as being on the spectrum. Some of them were just a little ‘different’, some were a lot different, and several of them were just classed as mentally disabled. I suspect it’s about the same number as now.
Has it always been this common? Well kinda.
It went undiagnosed before. We’re better at diagnosing it now. That’s why you’re seeing more of it.
Honestly watching old cartoons, it’s wild how much of it is just making fun of neurodivergence.
yes, there were always this many. but we were not good at diagnosing them. they were mostly seen as weirdos and cut out of social life for the most part.
Autism has always been this common. What happened was we drastically improved our understanding of this condition, which allows us to catch cases we couldn’t identify before.
Autism isn’t just “general weirdness.” The brain itself is different.
I always wondered if I was. They didn’t test for that. I hate being touched, eye contact, being around people. I had collections. Memorized things. Wasn’t social. Even my wife touches me sometimes and I’m uncomfortable. Dad taught me to fake it and I was good at sports so that helped. So I just think there wasn’t a name for it you were just “weird”
Misdiagnosis due to massive lack of understanding in the medical world, which is actually more common than you think. Medial science is not and likely will never be absolutely perfect.
Just imagine all the people with gluten allergies that were forced to eat gluten based foods all their childhoods.
I was having this conversation with my daughter, I am 67. Looking back, I can remeber people in my life who I thought were weird, Now, I realize they were probably autistic. I think it is just that we have more knowledge
Yes. It’s just rarely been diagnosed before.
The diagnostic rates increased; the per capita rates did not.
It’s more visible now. It’s not more common.
Yes, there always have been.
The rise in diagnoses in the last few decades is due to two main factors
Better research which has allowed psychiatrists to understand and recognize the signs and symptoms to issue a proper diagnosis, whereas before those autistic individuals may have been misdiagnosed or just written off as “special.”
A general diminishing in social stigma for having the condition, which encourages people to actually seek diagnosis for themselves or their children, other family, friends, etc, whereas before those individuals may have been either ashamed or afraid to do so.
It’s like how atoms have always existed, but it took until 1803 for them to be discovered and proven.
I think it’s diagnosed better.
On the flip side my son is level 3 autistic, and 28 years ago when I was in school he wouldn’t have had the therapies and help to go to class with nuerotypical kids. They used to put special needs children in separate rooms or buildings away from the other kids. Now they have better therapy so that those kids who need more help can go to class. He’s really quick on his interests and has gone from almost nonverbal to using sentences since starting kindergarten this year, as well as being a grade ahead in math
My dad was most definitely undiagnosed autistic. My sister, who is older than me and was able to spend more time with my dad’s mom, has stated she very much was as well (and my sister actually has a psychology degree).
I very much am as well and didn’t know it until just a couple years ago (I’m about to be 31).
Autism has been around probably forever, but only recently more understood and diagnosed. And even then it’s still not completely understood.
And if you’re note a 5 year old white male, you still often go undiagnosed.
It’s a fad where everybody who is socially awkward is self-diagnosing as autistic, and because the state of the world and technology is making everybody more socially awkward, it’s really taking off.
As with all fads, there will be a loud contingent of people who think everybody has always been autistic and now they can finally admit it or something.
When I was a kid (I’m 53), psychologists thought I had ADD. They didn’t know exactly what I had, because although I had emotional issues, I was very intelligent. I found out I was on the autism spectrum when I was 30.
Autistic people, in ages past, would have been seen as “quirky” or “odd” or even “slow”
In the Middle Ages, there was the myth of Changelings. A little baby would be sometimes replaced with a “Fairy” child at a young age. The replacement baby would be rather strange. I’m quite sure those myths stemmed from babies who were autistic. Autism doesn’t tend to present itself until age 2 or so.
Back in the day, being autistic meant you dad beat the shit out of you until you acted normal enough. You were disrespectful, a problem child, etc.
A person with ASP may not be able to understand why, but they do learn certain behaviors result in severe punishment and develop better masking.
Masking combined with little knowledge (autism wasn’t described until the 1940s) means a lot of them fly under the radar. Also, back then not being in perfect mental health was almost as bad as being gay. You kept that shit to yourself and bottled it up.