Simpson’s Leader-Times, PA April 29, 1963
“More than 500,000 children in the United States are mentally ill and most of them suffer from childhood schizophrenia, which is psychosis, not to be confused with mental retardation.”

Simpson’s Leader-Times, PA
January 15, 1967
Autistic Child Stays Completely to Himself
“…It is estimated that there are 500,000 such children in the US”.
FWIW–this quoted number is not from an isolated story, although these two were from the Simpson-Leader. There were many, starting from about 1963 under the header of “childhood schizophrenia” and “autism”. The use of the term childhood schizophrenia started to die out in the early 70’s and was overtaken by the use of the term autism in the ’80’s.

Simpson’s Leader-Times, PA, Sept 25, 1972
“…Dr. (Lorna) Wing says that although some experts have called autism a “childhood schizophrenia,” the disease differs from adult schizophrenia in that the child does not have delusions and hallucinations…”

The Capital (Annapolis, MD) July 13, 1973
Story about 3 children aged 9, 15, 14
Which would translate to birthdates of
1958, 1959, 1964
Which speaks both to adults and to vaccination schedule influences, since that was the way-back-when of few shots spaced widely and later often alluded to in current campaigns.
“…were “perfect babies,” according to their mothers. They cried very little, developed fairly normally, walking and talking at about the right age…Yet, each child, as he neared the age of two began to withdraw. Each child regressed in his language development and began to dislike being hugged. They each shied away from physical contact with their parents…”

Then, as now, there is lots of discussions of etiology, treatment modalities, some stories citing hopelessness, some discussing differential and unexpected outcomes. Like I said, purely anecdotal, but kind of interesting.

The more I learn, the more I strongly suspect I have Asperger’s. Reading previous comments I have made would show an evolution of thought on this, from acknowledging that I have some traits to, now, acknowledging that by “some” I mean “all but being impaired by my traits”. I could fall within the BAP, I suppose, instead. Either way, I’m not impaired by my differences. I’ve learned to make them work, and found people who love me for who I am, who don’t look at me weird if I have a hand twitching stim in public that draws looks and are understanding if I get upset because I don’t understand tones well and misinterpret statements. I’m smart, and I do a number of things well. Why in the world would I want to get a label now, when I’m finally an adult and finally really functioning in the world? I fear that it would give excuses to employers not to hire me (hard enough being a young adult and assumed to be a lazy good for nothing because of it), for people to discriminate. The mental picture so many people have of autism is so negative, I’m reluctant to associate myself with it. I do realize that this is contradictory to helping people see that autism isn’t just one thing, but it’s hard to take that leap.

My girlfriend has an overt disability (cerebral palsy) and has a hard enough time getting people to treat her as an intelligent adult. It’s selfish, yes, but I don’t want to stand up and be evaluated and counted if it means I will be marked as ‘disabled’ too. I’m able. I just do things differently.

My concern is of course that they do not have the resources to employ the census takers they will need for a realistic attempt, and rely on questionnaire return. One really needs a significant number of people to reply to be valid on a street to street basis otherwise it becomes all too prone the self selecting bias, (or self opting out as the case may be)

The worst case would be to trawl existing records and base questionnaires on that.

I wonder whether there was competitive bidding for this project, of whether it was just plonked on the team chosen in the expectation that they will be able to come up with a method, they know not of yet.

Well I intend to find out one way or the other. If not from professor Brugha, then from others involved elsewhere to whom I have easier and more reliable access.