The “autism epidemic,” which has seen a huge rise in the number of people diagnosed with autism in the last 20 years, is a result of the doctors widening the definition of the disorder, while the number of severely disabled autistic people has remained flat, according to the lead researcher behind a bombshell new study.
The study looked at autism diagnoses in Sweden, and found that while overall diagnoses skyrocketed by roughly 800%, the number of patients who also had an intellectual disability didn’t budge.
Between 2001 and 2020, the proportion of autistic individuals who also had an intellectual disability — meaning an IQ below 70 — plummeted from more than half (55.8%) to just 6.7%, according to research published in June from Sweden’s University of Gothenburg.
The overall rate of children being diagnosed with autism with intellectual disability also remained about even, as well — hitting about 5.5 cases per 100,000 births in 2020.
That truly remarkable surge in autistic diagnoses was driven by the number of new patients who did not have intellectual disabilities, which soared 1,800%.
“Autism today is assigned on significantly fewer symptoms than before,” one of the study’s lead authors, psychologist Sebastian Lundström, told The Post.
“We have also shown that even though the diagnosis increases, the symptoms constituting autism in the population do not increase,” he added.
“We’re talking about a very, very different phenotype today than we did 20, 30 years ago. The standard would be Dustin Hoffman’s ‘Rain Man,’ that would be autism in the classical sense,” Lundström said.
The study also found that among children diagnosed with autism before age 7, the number also diagnosed with an intellectual disability dropped from 68.3% to 15.2%.
The remarkable findings demonstrate just how much clinical understanding — along with public perception — of autism has changed in the past 20 years, Lundström said.
“Today, we have so many people being diagnosed with autism that wouldn’t have been diagnosed 10, 15 years ago,” he said. “What was once considered almost inherent to autism is now very, very seldom diagnosed in autism.”
Lundström believes the study shows that historically, autism was viewed mostly as cognitive impairment, whereas now, it can refer to many different traits.
“Something has changed, which may have pushed the threshold of what’s considered disabling,” he said.
And he warns that many countries, including the US, do not currently have the resources to respond to every new autism patient.
“We don’t have these resources for this huge number of individuals who will now get the disorder,” he said.
The range of resources required by the autistic population will also be very different thanks to a vastly greater population.
While some autistic individuals will require intensive, lifelong aid with basic communication and daily living, a growing segment will instead need more nuanced accommodations aimed at sensory processing, mental health, and social and academic navigation, the study found.
