Folks are coming out of the woodwork?

 Folks are coming out of the woodwork!

New research is indicating that the number of adults with autism is growing by leaps and bounds.  Since 2011, the number of people over 18 diagnosed with autism has more than doubled.  Currently, there are over 403,000 adult Medicaid beneficiaries with the diagnosis.  The increase in adults between the ages of 25-34 has jumped 195%!   Curiously the incidence of people with intellectual disability has declined from 62% to 46%.

There has also been a steep increase in the diagnosis of children.  At this time, it is approaching 1 in 36.

The question then becomes, why?

There is an old saying, “seek and thy shall find”.  It may be that we are seeking.  There have been multiple theories advanced about why the increase in children diagnosed with autism.  

Various vaccines have been called into question as the cause of the increase.  None of those theories has been supported by research.

There have been studies that blame older sperm as the cause. While it was interesting to hear that older sperm rather than older eggs were the cause, the theory too has not been supported by independent research.  Other studies have blamed genetics and/or drug use.  All of these theories have also been debunked.

One of the interesting phenomena is that as the number of people on the spectrum has increased the identification of other disability groups has decreased leading one to believe that there may not actually be in increase in people on the spectrum.  But rather a refinement of how we are identifying the various disabilities.

Regardless of the why, there is a critical need to improve services to these individuals.  If it is true that some of these people were previously identified with a different disability, the treatment for autism is very different from those other disabilities and services will need to be created to meet those needs.  Adult individuals who have not received assistance in life skills adaptation are going to need that remedial instruction as adults.

The literature is full of “look back” studies in which it is determined that many famous people were on the spectrum from Thomas Jefferson to Albert Einstein and have been identified as possibly on the spectrum.

So the truth might be that these folks were living in the woodwork all along we just got around to figuring where they were hiding.