Why are autism rates increasing?

Transcript

 Why are autism rates increasing? Well, mostly it's actually autism diagnosis rates increasing. Most, if not all, is because people just weren't getting diagnosed before. Anyone other than white boys with the most stereotypical patterns often got missed, maybe diagnosed with other developmental disabilities or just labeled as challenging or even eccentric.

Many marginalized groups are still underdiagnosed, but the gap is improving. And there may be other minor factors in play, like more children with complex conditions surviving long enough to get diagnosed. But that would be a very small piece of it. It was popular for a while to blame vaccines, which mostly started with one British doctor who was eventually barred from the field after major lies were discovered in his work.

A lot of research double-checked the vaccine theory afterwards and solidly found that unvaccinated kids had autism just as often as vaccinated kids. Other people have tried to blame screen time or bad parenting, but we know that by far the main reason that someone is autistic is because they were born with autistic genetics.

We can be confident that the increase in autism diagnoses doesn't mean that way more kids are needing help, means that way more kids are receiving help. Autism is a natural part of human diversity that has been with us throughout history and will be with us hopefully with increasing support and acceptance into the future.

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