Why do people think that ASD's are overdiagnosed?

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I was just on YouTube watching videos of autistic toddlers so that I can compare their behavior to my sons and so many of the comments were outrageous! There were toddlers exhibiting clearly autistic behavior and so many people were saying that they were just "kids being kids" and getting tons of "thumbs up" from people who agreed. I just don't understand this! A few months ago, before I knew that I had an ASD and thought that I was NT, I would have NEVER assumed that I knew anything about autism! I especially would have never been so insensitive to comment on people's YouTube videos (that they obviously posted in order to help other parents identify behaviors) of their DIAGNOSED autistic children acting as if I knew better than a professional. I just don't understand this at all and it's making me so angry to see.

When I was a in elementary school, my teacher told my parents that I was displaying some signs of ADD. My parents decided that I was just "being a kid" and that she didn't feel like being annoyed by my "normal child-like behaviors" so she was "trying to get them to medicate me". It's now over 20 years later and I find out that it was actually AS, and that something could have been done to help me for all of these years if my parents didn't decide that they somehow knew better than a professional who is trained to notice abnormalities in children.

I just don't understand it at all and it's making me very upset

Here in Norway, you won't get an Asperger's diagnosis unless other possibilities (whether it's PTSD, a sheltered upbringing or whatever) have been ruled out.

The symptomology is heterogeneous. It's probably IS over diagnosed, but not because the symptoms aren't there, instead because there are many other conditions that cause it.

No...there aren't... Asperger's isn't caused by another condition...

The reason they think it is overdiagnosed is that they do not know what goes on in our head, they only see our behavior... and most Aspergians act like right asses most of the time by NT standards... Since they don't have the frame of reference or the experience to compare our mental processes to ours, they just assume that we are using a diagnosis as an excuse

I don't think many people think it is "overdiagnosed"; I think they simply aren't aware of what it is yet, or they can't accept its existance. OTOH, to some folks, maybe Asperger's is the new ADHD. Now THAT truly was ovediagnosed back when it was all the rage in the 90's. You'd have to be pretty damn ignorant to think autism would be overdiagnosed though. How many kids stim, possess poor social skills and are absolutely consumed by their interests? Pretty unique criteria really.

Autism has been hot in the media. So it seems like it has been on the rise and that tons of kids are being diagnosed. So people think it's the new ADD and that too many are being misdiagnosed with it.

Wow, you took the words right out of my mouth lol.

People who don't know jack about asperger's almost always cause problems for those who have it (myself included) because they ignore that it's a mental capability problem, not a behavioral problem. But people look at the behavioral aspects of it because they can't understand the rest, and they never will.
When people ask me what it's like having aspergers, I tell them all the same thing, and that's "the only way to understand what it's like, is to have it". And because they don't understand us, they label us, and call us assh***s, and cast us into the ever expanding pit of "non-desirables". Wow... this world is great for their "evolved, logical, accepting thinking and ways" (sarcasm).

I did some research on this, and what I found was that ADHD is underdiagnosed and undermedicated. It was never overdiagnosed, and the popular perception that it was largely was due to PR manipulation on the part of anti-psychiatry groups such as the Church of Scientology.

One study that found it was overdiagnosed was discredited due to asking parents one question and changing the question's wording in the final paper.

People think that way due to ignorance. I'll admit that up to 5 years ago I knew nothing about autism. I knew one toddler with autism back then and all I could observe was he was "difficult". When our kids started school and the teachers started the "talks" I was in denial for quite a while. My kids were just as I expected, they're like me and DH. I didn't believe they could have anything serious. The school kept pushing though, eventually I got the on the waitlist to be diagnosed. After they got diagnosis I did a lot of reading and studying, then I was like: wait a moment, this is me. Then I went and got diagnosed, too. Now that I understand it, there are so many things that seem so obvious I can't believed that I ever thought I was perfectly normal, just a bit odd. I was so not self aware I had no idea what NT people was like and how they differed from us.

People used to not know all sorts of things and what caused what condition. They ignore them or attribute them to all sorts of ridiculous reasons, like the devil. Hopefully that will eventually change. Also, sometimes a little bit of knowledge or awareness can make you suddenly notice such things everywhere, and thus feel "over diagnosed". It's like I never noticed babies before I had one, then for a while I notice so many babies everywhere. Makes you wonder where the world hid all those babies before.

I don't like to be this cynical, but until Big Pharma finds a pill to treat AS our situation will be this constant struggle for recognition.

People think it's over-diagnosed because they still think of autism as severe autism so they are unable to recongize mild autism as still being autism while diagnosticians apparently can.

It's because it's getting a lot of coverage in the media lately.

It's the wont of NTs to take scant information and use it as a basis on which to over-generalize.

Oh, and to many people, you can't "see" the human brain; therefore, "brain problems" don't actually exist and can be overcome by "trying harder."

Well psychiatry works this way that people with problems get shifted around and some diagnoses are getting more recognized.

The question was Autism Spectrum Disorder, not asperger's specifically, and for the record there ARE conditions that cause brain structure similar to autism. Lujan-Fryns, Fragile X, Rett Syndrome, Tourette's, and as I recently posted Ehlers-Danlos syndrome.

I'm not saying that ALL cases are attributed to other conditions, just that there are things that can cause the Autism symptoms.

Well maybe they aren't just simmilar, but infact the same in some cases.
We still don't know enough about the brain to say that.

I was even highly introverted as a baby, even in the first days of my life, was a late talker and so on and this is NOT caused by the view tics, I got some years ago...!

Maybe all those disorders aren't that different in the end.
Even Attwood writes about Aspies with Tourettes's and ADHD by the way.

I think it has something to do with the seemingly large amount of self-diagnosed "Aspies" who then pretend that their self-diagnosis should cause others to make more concessions to them than to the average NT -- which all seems to be fashionable these days.

Ignore the number of those who've self-diagnosed, and the problem of over-diagnosis will seem to vanish before your eyes.