Has Autism increased or is awareness better?

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Just a passing question on my mind that I thought I’d ask.

Reason why I asked is because when I was very young I did very much a lot of the ‘red flag signs’ that would cause people’s attention and concern although speech developed very early.

But I am hearing more and more people being diagnosed now like it has all of a sudden someone has caught it (I know you can’t catch Autism but I know what I mean).

I know it has always been around just look at history and some people’s behaviour through history. But, has it actually increased if so what has caused it to increase or has it always had a high number just now we are more aware.

More awareness

More awareness plus less autism friendly world(more multitasking, group activities expected at school/work, sensory stimiulation) leading to people who could have gotten by if they were around 30 years not being able to today.

I think autism has become sort of a trendy diagnosis and people want to assume that any person who might be the slightest bit quirky has autism.

The increase in autism incidence, in my opinion, is caused primarily by the broadening of the diagnostic criteria.

Prior to 1994, "autism" was, basically, "Classic autism."

After 1994, it become a "Spectrum."

I agree

The old adage "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" comes to mind when I think of autism awareness.

I think that there is greater awareness, but the danger is that it has spread its own share of stereotypes about what autistic people are like. I think it gives some people an exaggerated sense that they are educated about it, which combined with unhelpful stereotypes, can actually make it harder for them to comprehend our very individual experiences of being autistic when they encounter us in person. Like ASPartOfMe, I feel that regardless of increased awareness, the world is now more difficult for me to live in than it was decades ago (maybe not so for someone with different traits to mine, though.)

I think it's hard to avoid going through a stage of "partial understanding" like this, but I wish there were more attention given to the diversity of experiences rather than "newsworthy" or click-baity anecdotes that can fix the stereotypes in people's minds. The anecdotal style of campaigning also results in too little emphasis on the systemic social problems that we can have (the "less autism friendly world" as ASPartOfMe said) Those can't be fixed just by encouraging people to have more compassion for us on an interpersonal level; they require critical engagement with politics, scientific research and medical practice, which most awareness campaigns seem very scared of doing for fear of alienating potential charitable donors or creating any controversy.

I think it is because there are more Autistic people and better Autism awareness. So I would say it is both.

amen to that. the modern world is insanely cluttered with things to do n remember that are superficial yet demanded for society. i wish i grew up in the 80's.

Various factors like...

* Greater awareness means more people getting assessed. Of the larger volume assessed, more will end up diagnosed.
* Broadening of diagnostic criteria & better diagnostic tools. "Higher-functioning" individuals being assessed more.
* Late 80s "IDEA" (Individual with Disabilities Education Act) mandated school/educational services for disabled children. Prior to this service disabled children were often removed from classrooms that couldn't accommodate them. If the data on autistic children came from schools and the children weren't there to be counted, they weren't figured in the numbers.
* Potential correlation with parents having children later in life, particularly seems to be a link to older fathers and AS.

I'd like to say that it's due to more awareness and a less tolerant world.

It is most definitely the latter.

I think it's due to a broadening of the diagnostic criteria and greater awareness, which IDK if it's led to more acceptance. I wrote this thread about a couple months ago, in which I take on this very topic.

This is an excellent point; the world has definitely become less autism friendly in many respects. At the university where I work, there are ever-increasing pressures to introduce group-activity oriented components to the assessment and evaluation of student performance. Extroverted NTs seem to have almost unlimited confidence that they know "what is good for" students in general. Even introverted students who are not on the autism spectrum are bound to suffer, but autistic students especially are increasingly disadvantaged.