Got these forwarded to me from a newsgroup about autism. I think that there is a very definite trend showing here. Bear in mind that it is very typical for approximately half of autistic children to go into residential care around puberty (ages 13-15), so the numbers for the older children may be artificially low for that reason (many children in residential care will not be tallied by the State’s Dept of Ed.) There will also be some degree of attrition after age 16 as school attendance is not mandatory after that age even for special ed students. However, looking at the oldest children reported, even tripling the numbers does not bring them anywhere close to the numbers of the youngest children.
Until we conduct quality population studies on larger scale than has been done, the truth about the increasing prevalance rate will remain in the realm of speculation.
Not yet on the US Department of Education Report…will be the 23rd Annual Report for the Year 2000/2001
Autism – ages 6-21
The latest from Trenton for the year 2000/2001 is 2,905. I received the following breakdown by age:
Age 6.. Age 7.. Age 8.. Age 9.. Age 10.. Age 11.. Age 12..
.470…..425….. 424…. 354…… 244….. 200…… 166
Age 13.. Age 14.. Age 15.. Age 16.. Age 17.. Age 18
..142 ……123 ………88…….. 73…….. 55…… 63
Age 19.. Age 20.. Age 21.. Total
….34…….. 34……. 10.… 2,905
Re: small follow-up to previous post - autism statistics
I think a reason for the increase is more frequent diagnosis due to the classification of autism as a “spectrum” disorder. I fear that children who used to be “dumped” in the Attention Deficit camp are now being “dumped” in the autism diagnosis with Aspergers or PDD.
Re: small follow-up to previous post - autism statistics
PDD is certainly a problematic dx. It is tantamount to “we know something is up, but we can’t quite define what it is”.
Asperger’s however is a completely legitimate dx. The fact that here in the States we are 50 years behind Europe in recognizing it is our shortcoming. A recent study completed in the UK found Asperger’s to occur in nearly 1 in 200. Whether Asperger’s is truly part of the autism spectrum or not is still being questioned, but most experts are in agreement that it is a form of high functioning autism.
I would gree that much of the increase in occurance is better recognition. However this does not explain why there is not a more even distribution of occurance among age groups. There are very definately a great deal more children under the age 8 with Spectrum than those older. Again, with the limited success of the basic “generic” programs being offered the majority of people on the Spectrum, the prospects for most are pretty bleak (read residential care by the time they are adults).
So I ask, if it is indeed true that the prevalance of autism has not changed, just our ability to recognize it, where are all the hundreds of thousands of adults who would be here were this true? If there are currently 65K children with autism in the schools, plus those who are not part of this headcount, then there should be a couple hundred thousand adults in residential care. And they simply are not there.
I read your posts with interest. My son is LD but I try and keep up with other issues.
I wonder if the numbers are really going up so dramatically or if awareness has grown detecting problems that were ignored before.