As Autism Diagnoses Went Up, Intellectual Disability Diagnoses Went Down 2000-2010 | Penn State

4 comments

1. They are both intellectual disabilities, so this makes complete sense.

2. Well frankly its more palatable to be told a child has autism than is intellectually disabled.

   Some other things to mention I guess is how turning autism into a spectrum resulted in things like Aspergers and another disorder involving early developmental disorders into a single category. This happened with the DSM-IV in 1994. In 2013 diagnoses such as Aspergers were retired. It’s nothing new the changes in the chart above represent that increase.

   There’s nothing really surprising here. The messed up part about a spectrum is that because of how grouped up it is many parents falsely believe their children will change and get better even though that will never happen. In many cases for the parent it can be better for them to give up the child what happens very often with intellectually disabled children. A part of me wonders if a parent hears that their child has autism and now instead immediately decides due to stigma it would just be better give them up. So far it seems as though that hasn’t happened yet.

3. The “shifting patterns of diagnosis” is because around the 2000s, they reclassified what could be considered “autism” and more people fulfilled the milder spectrum.

   Edit: Oh, the disorder was updated in 2000.

4. In several countries including my own it became satisfactory to have a diagnosis of ASD or ADHD to receive government payments as opposed to “intellectual disability”. This likely led to a rise in people seeking these diagnoses and not requiring the intellectual disability diagnosis

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