I’m curious as to the seeming rise of autistic humans in the last decades.
Is it that it was just not understood and therefore not diagnosed/reported?
Are there environmental or even societal factors that have corresponded to this increase in cases?
In: Biology
Consider ADHD as another example of something that has had an incredible increase in diagnosis. I am one of those “new” cases.
I am a high functioning 43 year old man with a wife, 2 kids, my own business, home, cars and all the other bits. And yet I was recently diagnosed with inattentive type ADHD and started treatment. To say that taking the stimulant medication made a huge difference would be a massive understatement.
As a kid, my grades swung between A+ and a C, depending on the subject and the teacher. If I engaged with the subject and the teacher I fucking aced it. If it was something I wasn’t drawn to I checked out. This is despite desperately not wanting to check out. When I got to university this became even more pronounced. I wanted to do the work and the study, I just couldn’t.
For people who don’t have adhd I found it impossible to explain why I would just not do the things that I needed to do, that I wanted to do. Until it was framed to me that what I feel when trying to do these tasks would be the same as a normal brain going out on a Friday night, getting hammered, coming home at 2pm and then their alarm going off at 6am to go for a 10km run. That is how hard doing tasks that aren’t in my current interest focus are to do.
Now I take dexamphetamine, which is a stimulant and part of what is in Adderal (don’t get that here). Now I can just do the things that I want and need to do, without them either being a passion or earth shatteringly critical. Doing my job is so much easier that it’s a fucking joke. I can remember to do things, I don’t forget where my keys are constantly.
Back in the 80s and 90s there was zero chance of me being assessed, let alone diagnosed, because I didn’t have the behaviour issues and I got good enough grades to get by. But I had it. So clearly looking back I had it. And the thing I struggle with the most, and have to be very careful about not dwelling on, is how many opportunities I missed, how many fuck ups I made, and how many friends I lost because of undiagnosed ADHD.
There are just as many people who got through life not being diagnosed as on the autism spectrum.
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