I’m 42 but British. I was a weird kid, but over in Blighty autism wasn’t something that was even considered back then - just “how much more do we need to cane him until he’s normal?!”.

It turns out, no amount. Now I’m just a weird adult with an ironclad distrust of all authority.

There is a huge amount of overlap between the genes associated with schizophrenia and the genes associated with autism. This is part of what makes it tricky to diagnose yourself, because anyone who has the genes for schizophrenia is also going to have a lot of autism symptoms even if they don't have autism.

This is just for England not the whole UK. Just saying. In Scotland, there has been a move to have an autism commissioner as if that's going to benefit the lives of most autistic people. Don't know about Wales and Northern Ireland.

“An autist”—get off of 4chan.

Autism is a varied condition and the stereotype that you are referring to does not apply to a very, very sizeable portion of people with autism.

This is almost not even up for debate anymore. At this point there is myriad evidence of it being the latter. For example, autism in women was all but ignored until recently, and is still under-diagnosed. Remember Grandma and her lifelong fixation on china saucers or whatever?

More diagnosis for sure

It is primarily driven by the expansion of the diagnosis itself. DSM-3 Autism (1980) is quite different from DSM-5 Autism (today). We use the same word to describe two different things. Today's autism includes things that used to have totally different names. It also "allows" for a diagnosis much later in life. Autism used to be something very specific and discreet. From another perspective, the rate may not be soaring. That is, many more people in the 1980s and 1990s would be autistic by today's new standard.

nice, that's genius. great idea!