Better Diagnosis and So-called Epidemics (2)
October 31, 2007 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
Are there actually more children with autism, or has the autism rate increased—to 1 in 150 children in the US—-due to our being able to diagnose autism better. Today’s ABC News considers whether your child is autistic or “just different”?
Rebecca Odes, author of “From the Hips” and parent advice columnist for baffle.com, notes that
“Autism definitely makes the list of many parents’ top anxieties.
Marshalyn Yeargin-Allsopp, MD, Medical Epidemiologist and Branch Chief, Developmental Disabilities Branch, Division of Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, NCBDDD, says:
“This is a major health problem, but we are not using the term epidemic.
Some advocates for autism research and treatment seems to be “culling” more research funds; Dr. Yeargin-Allsopp also notes that “‘”I won’t say it takes away from other disorders, but [they] somehow influence Congress and have a better opportunity to see that their interests are funded.” The ABC News story notes these figures:
….about half the number of children diagnosed with autism three in 1,000 have cerebral palsy. One in 800 has Down syndrome; only 1 in 1,000 has hearing or vision loss. But 9.7 in 1,000 are diagnosed with mental retardation.
Overall, a staggering 17 percent of all children are affected by a large group of learning disabilities, including autistic behaviors.
Though I sometimes say that my son has “classic autism”—the PDD-NOS diagnosis was never given to him; he clearly struggles to speak and to learn a number of academic skills—I am not so certain that he would have been diagnosed with autism in a previous generation. I do think that he would have received a diagnosis of mental retardation, and perhaps this would have been his only diagnosis, instead of autism. Certainly it is hard, though, to think of Charlie not being autistic.
I think it’s the whole “spectrum” concept that broadens the borders within which autism is diagnosed. And also the fact that we generally use the term autism to label children with totally different conditions (one being in one edge of the spectrum and one in the other). I must admit I haven’t met many autistic children, actually only one, apart from my own.But having read about other childrens’ stories, I can see there is a great diversity in symptoms and characteristics of autistic children. Now I know this is common knowledge among people who are, one way or another, affected by autism, but the rest of the world doesn’t seem to realize that. My son, who is diagnosed with PDD-NOS, has clearly some autistic traits, but also a total absence of others. He is considered to be on the spectrum, but not “classical autistic”. This confuses people, even specialists, who often seem to act really surprised when I tell them he is autistic (is he?). I’m sure that if he was born a few decades ago, people would think he is just a little behind, or probably slightly retadred, or weird and this would have deprived him from the appropriate intervention.
I think Patrick would have been labelled “bad” had he made it to school. Not MR but maybe schizophrenic. Nope, I take that back. If the person looking at him had not had the skills to find out how smart he was he might have been diagnosed MR way back when.
He’s always had speech, although only echolalia until recently. So people often don’t believe he’s autistic…till they watch him closely for a few minutes. He certainly doesn’t understand a lot of concepts and, except for the speech, is pretty classically autistic. But for some reason, most people can’t get over the speech part.
When they are only looking at full syndrome autism in CA and it\’s increasing as fast as the paragraph below documents, that should be called epidemic.
\”During the past 9 months alone California has added over 2900 new children with full syndrome autism (as always, the numbers of new intakes ONLY includes professionally diagnosed cases of full syndrome DSM IV autism and DOES NOT include any other autism spectrum disorders like PDD, NOS, or Asperger\’s Syndrome). Keep in mind that it took 16 years (from 1971 to 1987) for California\’s DD system to see a total population of 2700 persons with autism…during the past 9 MONTHS alone California has added 2900 new cases.
Autism is not only the fastest growing condition in California\’s DD system, now accounting for over 60% of all the new intakes (the remaining less then 40% being the COMBINED numbers of new intakes with mental retardation, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, and conditions that have as part of the condition mental retardation such as genetic diseases Fragile X and Down\’s), but; now there are more persons in California\’s DD system with a primary diagnosis of autism than with cerebral palsy.
Unlike any other of the conditions served by California\’s DD system where you see between 55- 60% of those populations over the age of 22 years old, with autism only 16% of the population is over the age of 22 years old, 84% between 3 and 21, and eight out of ten between 3 and 18 years old.\” [Rick Rollens]
I think that some of these kids would have been diagnosed with MR. Which just makes me cringe. Both may sons are very smart, but their verbal delays have been their downfall. I was reviewing his CARS testing the other day and realized that certain characteristics have definitely improved through therapy.
The question I have is this: has there been a study in school discricts to see if certain other “exceptionalites” aka labels have decreased in numbers while other autism has increased?
I am worried that autism will end up becoming a catch-all label.
Rick Rollens is from The MIND Institute and has used exaggerated, negative metaphor to describe the autistic population.
This story covers one county in California that sees no increase in overall special education enrollment. However, there is a significant increase in autistic students and equal decrease in students with specific learning disabilities and MR. They cite the rise in special ed spending is due to the use of 1 on 1 aides and other resources specifically for autistic students.
I lived in a neighboring county and saw children that had identical special needs as my son but were older and were not given the same resources that we were granted. The outcome will be quite different.
http://www.chicoer.com//ci_7108396?IADID=Search-www.chicoer.com-www.chicoer.com