Awareness Of The Spectrum

The CDC says that diagnoses of autism are up 78% in the last decade as more and more parents, schools, and mental health professionals are becoming aware of the full range of what it means to be "autistic", especially among American boys:

Boys with autism continue to outnumber girls 5-to-1, according to the CDC report. It estimates that 1 in 54 boys in the United States have autism.

Mark Roithmayr, president of the advocacy group Autism Speaks, says more children are being diagnosed with autism because of "better diagnosis, broader diagnosis, better awareness, and roughly 50% of 'We don't know.'"

He said the numbers show there is an epidemic of autism in the United States.

Early recognition of signs of autism -- a neurodevelopment disorder that leads to impaired language, communication and social skills -- is vital because it can lead to early intervention, says Dr. Gary Goldstein, an autism specialist and president of the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore.

"There have been studies -- double-blinded studies -- to show that behavioral early intervention changes the outcome for children," Goldstein says.

That's roughly 2% of boys now, one in 50.  Compare that to 1980, when a small town school system thought I was just weird and put me in special ed classes after school for a year because they thought I was slow or weird when I was just bored out of my skull and reading high school level books in elementary school.  Kids these days are getting the help they need and a big part of that is awareness on the part of schools, communities, and parents.

In a sense it's both comforting and terrifying to see the number of kids with autism spectrum disorders up so much.  It means we've been underestimating and under-serving these kids for a long, long time.