Im on the spectrum and so are you! Definition of autism so broad that its meaningless

In another 20 years, we’ll all be on the spectrum.That was my first thought after reading a recent report on the rise in people diagnosed with autism.European researchers have documented that over a 20-year period, from 2001 to 2020, the number of people who have some form of autism rose dramatically.Yet they found no rise in the number of people with severe autism: autism with intellectual disability.The number of autistic people with intellectual disability remained absolutely flat over those 20 years.

But the number of people diagnosed with autism who did not have intellectual disability soared, rising 1,800% over 20 years.In other words: for every one person diagnosed with autism without intellectual disability in 2001, 18 people were diagnosed in 2020.Professor Uta Frith at University College London has been studying autism for 60 years.Commenting on this study, she expressed concern about “diagnostic inflation,” which has the effect of “pathologizing normal human variations.”That’s a fancy way of saying that Professor Frith is skeptical about whether all these people with autism truly have autism.

They may just be normal people who are being diagnosed with autism because they have issues with social interaction.I have been a family physician for more than 30 years, and I think Professor Frith has a point.Social media is part of the problem.One popular TikTok video, with more than 11 million views, presents a series of statements.

If you agree with the statement, then you may be on the spectrum.One of the statements in that TikTok video is “You don’t like talking on the phone because phone conversations are stressful.”OK, I’m a family doctor, and I can tell you with confidence that about half of the adults I see would agree with that statement.American researchers recently studied 100 popular TikTok videos about autism and found those videos to be “unsatisfactory” and “often misleading.”Researchers have also documented that it’...