Why is Asperger's so much more common these days?

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Interesting.

About that time (1969)I saw a movie in a theater that HAS to be the first major motion picture to depict autism (though the word is not mentioned in the movie ASFAIK) called "Run Wild, Run Free". A British import close to twenty years before "Rain Man" about a boy growing up on the Yorkshire Moors with selective mutism and other autistic traits. Very good movie actually. Even though seeing it with my parents as a kid was kinda ...some of the family dynamics in the film were a little too close to home and made me squirm.

^^^I will have to see if Netflix has that on DVD.

It's on YouTube if you can't find it

thank you ^^^

Maybe could also be people that were missed in the 90's and before...getting diagnosed as adults.

Its not like teachers never noticed something different about me...but they didn't know what if anything to do about it, so I think a lot just let me be. Sometimes mentioned to my parents that I might have some learning issue or adhd(seems that was more known about than ASD in the 90s) though they always said adhd didn't seem right because I wasn't hyperactive at all, but I still seemed to have trouble paying attention or this or that. It wasn't till much later in my 20's I really found out that was what made me different and why I felt like I didn't get it when it came to social interaction.

what I had, in school, was common thought treatable by abundant applications of the paddle on backside [the kind with holes drilled through it, sadistically] and public humiliation and letters sent home to parents castigating them for not spanking me more.

The film did not name autism but reviews at that time did. The film starred Mark Lester best known at the time for Oliver!

I do agree with others in that health professionals are more adept at diagnosing ASD today, which accounts for an increase in the official number of us. However, I believe that ASD is not a disorder at all, but rather an evolutionary process.

The percentage of new diagnoses amongst children will continue to climb until ASD is the norm. In 2018, the number of children on the Spectrum is suspected to be around 1 in 40. That is up from 1 in about 100 less than two decades prior and it's accelerating. By 2050 or 2060 an ASD child will likely be the norm. What society has termed "Autism" is a phenomenon that is having a significant impact on human evolution. Having achieved self-realization myself (it took me 49 years to figure out that I fell on the Spectrum), I believe that we are the precursor of what is to come.

For me, Autism is not a disorder or a curse. I see advantages to the way my brain is wired and I see the associated gifts that come with it. I may not live to see it, but I have no doubt that we will be the new "normal" or the neo-neurotypical in short order.

I swear to God I did not make fun of anybody in this thread. Maybe I was confused, I don't know the history of Asperger's, all I know is it got known about in the UK in 1994 and every adult that it got mentioned to seemed to know what it was. Also it was drummed into me as a child that all children with Asperger's get diagnosed at around the age of 8. But I never knew anybody else on the spectrum as a child (all family and classmates were allistic as far as I knew). It wasn't until I joined WP that I realised more Aspies go unrecognised than not. I think those that weren't diagnosed in childhood here outnumber those who were diagnosed in childhood.

I just get confused as to how I was diagnosed so young if I am a girl with only Asperger's when they say that girls with Asperger's don't get recognised until later on in life unless they have a more severe case of autism, which I don't. So had I been alive in the 50s or whatever, I would have probably been sent to an institution instead of mainstream school, judging by how recognisable I was. I bet I would have probably been the only female high-functioning kid there as well.

I am self diagnosed Autistic and self diagnosed Down Syndrome through wikipedia and google search. OMG I must have Autism! OMG I must have Down Syndrome! The doctors have not diagnosed me with either condition. I am self diagnosed!

WHAT THA FORK are you talking about????????

Its impossible to be "self diagnosed with Down's Syndrome from reading up on Wiki". If you really had Downs Syndrome you wouldn't even be able to use Wiki in the first place.

Half of the population of WP (including myself at first) are "self diagnosed autistics/aspies" because those conditions are subtle.

Downs diagnosing doesn't work that way.

If you had Downs you would stand out so much that your parents would have had you dxd from the get go in infancy( and probably would have sent you to an institution), and also you would physically look very different from most people around you (Downs people have a distinctive look- there would be no guess work -it would be obvious just looking at you),and you would be so mentally ret*d that you would function on the level of six year old at best. You would probably be totally illiterate. Maybe you would be able to write like first grader, but you certainly would not be able to make a post on the internet like the one I am now responding to. You may have your facts messed up, but you are certainly able to put a sentence together like a grown up.

You might not come to that conclusion if you had level 2 or 3 autism. I'm somewhere in the middle of that having started out as severe (level 3) and finally progressed to level 2, which was a matter of developmental delay. It's a severe disability for me. And for everyone else I know who also has significant autism. It inhibits and impaires me to a tremendous degree. I can barely talk. Can't drive a car. Can't go anywhere by myself. Am subjected to sensory shutdowns, meltdowns, autistic catatonia. Am withdrawn. And so on.

Having aspergers is rough. And I truly sympathize with those are affected by it. But it's basically only a taste of significant hardcore autism.

And what you are describing possibly shouldn't be classified as autism at all.

NaturalPlastic, please stop.

I feel like this is a little contradictory. Do you think autism is something old which people are more aware of, or an emerging evolutionary outcome?

We are not the “next step in human evolution.”

Sorry to be the bearer of hard truths.

The guy who got killed in the barbershop in 1957 was Albert Anastasia.

Down Syndrome is almost always diagnosed in utero, or at birth.

There are some Downs Syndrome people who can attain close to normal intelligence. Look at the character “Corky” in “Life Goes On.” He was able to learn to drive.