Census of people in the spectrum

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I have frequently read about an alleged increase of cases of autism both in the US and particularly in the Silicon Valley. There is surely an increase in Dxing due to a better understanding of the problem. But I haven’t seen attempts to extrapolate figures, with due consideration to the fact that, presumably, the percentages available are based only on children and young people in developed urban environment and that there certainly is a submerged mass of adult and old people who suffer of the condition without anyone knowing. Even here I have seen very few cases of people over 50. Would it be possible to start tackling the problem of old people in the spectrum, who may suffer more than anybody else?

I am 73. As for psychoanalyis it has only had a disatrous effect. Anyhow a psychoanalist wouldn' even admit the existence o Asperger, at least in France or Italy.
I want to point out that many aspies or others in the spectrum may in the last resort rely on relatives. When you advance in age, lest you have been married, you find that sometimes you have no relatives who may support you (at least psychologically).
For what concerns married people with autism I would like to do a special thread if possible.

I'm 50, and was diagnosed two years ago, but only after I'd started to research the possibility for myself.
Despite an atypical childhood, it wasn't a condition that was on the agenda.
I did get called on occasion "A little professor" which nowadays might set bells ringing.

But my relative social isolation was just put down to being brighter than all the other kids in the village: I was bored by their games, they couldn't follow what I was interested in.

Late fifties, early sixties, was some time ago.

Count me in as well.

I have a bil who was "born ret*d," according to the family. He received numerous and various therapies through adolescence, and was mainstreamed in school around age 11 or 12. Now I look at him and know that he's HFA, not ret*d. He's incredibly lucky that his family could afford the therapies he received, and that many of them were similar to what autistic kids get now. But there wasn't a word for it in the 60's when he was born, so it was "ret*d." My conclusion -- there is no explosion in autism -- it's all a matter of what you call it.

The number of cases that will be diagnosed is directly proportional to the number of 'professionals' who earn a living treating them.

After I got diagnosed and read more about AS I come to realize just how much of my family is affected. Besides my parents being probably somewhere on the spectrum my dad's stepbrother I now realized probably has Aspergers. I vaguely remember being told as a child that he was "ret*d or something". He always lived with my grandmother, yet he did not act like the ret*d and Downs Syndrome people in my school. Yes they put the Downs kids in mainstream classes where I grew up and let them sit their in a seat all day and learn nothing. Anyways my uncle is real smart in some things like he can take cars apart and put them back together and about anything else mechanical. I remember he expressed strong politcial views one time and spoke quite fluently and was certainly cognitive. So I remember thinking then why do they say he's ret*d? He was just different. He didn't like to bathe, had no friends, hardly ever held down a job only dated one woman in his life that I know of. Sounds more like Aspergers doesn't it? Only thing is he didn't sit and stim as far as I could tell and doesn't have the sensory issues like I do with noise, light, etc.

So I don't think there is an autism explosion. Ok maybe a few more than previously just because of environmental poisons and too many preemie births. But I think autism has been around for hundreds and thousands of years. Those people just either fell through the cracks, were cared for by family and hid from society, trudged through life as best they could, were misdiagnosed with something else or got murdered early in life by NT bullies who ganged up on them for being different.

I wouldn't be surprised if some women hung at the Witch Trials in Salem might have been autistic.

On another note I just recently read in New Jersey they are saying 1 in 94 kids is autistic. So they must have a lot of autistim specialists there right?

It wouldn't surprise me at all, shadow projections onto the 'odd' ladies of the village. I'd probably have been strung up myself if I'd been there at the time.