Autism Rates Increase to 1 in 50 Among US School Age Children (via http://faroutradio.com/)
Dylan Charles for Waking Times. New figures for autism prevalence amongst school-age children (2-17 years) in the United States were recently published in a report by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). According to this new estimate, rates of autism…
While the numbers are alarming, I believe that when it was determined that the jump from 1 in 88 to 50 was actually due to the diagnosis of kids in tn the middle grades who had been missed and not an actual new jump in cases. It still does mean 1 in 50 though. People like to say the other jump was better diagnosis and broader definition, and while that had an effect, it wasn’t the cause.
Personally I’m not a fan of this study – a telephone survey about health can be very biased, because many people that are specifically interested in health issues such as parents like ourselves might be more apt to participate. Claims were also not substantiated by any type of evidence of clinical or educational diagnosis. However, since this is how they’ve done previous studies, it holds some weight. It seems there could be a more scientific way to collect data on this, don’t you think? I found a link to the full study if anyone missed it – http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr065.pdf
If this is the same report as last time, I believe it was based off of a telephone interview without even confirming if the child had the diagnosis. Just a rumor, haven’t bothered to look it up. Where’s the facts for adults? They leave us out of it all the time. “1 in 50 kids”…what about adults?