The apparent rise in autistic people in the last 40 years

Question

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

Answer 1

I’m high functioning autistic. 40 years ago when I was a kid, autism was something people only knew from Rain Man, where it happened to people who could barely function. I was just labeled as “gifted”, even though I’d struggled mightily (and to some extent still do) with social situations.

So yeah, we’ve learned more about it since then.