Friday, March 28, 2014

Obligatory Post About the New Autism Rate Numbers from the CDC

Would someone please tell me how this study is going to trigger society finally, really, helping those on the autism spectrum. Furthermore, there is something rather surreal about counting people as if they were simply dried beans in a jar.  The irony is that this latest study doesn't actually change anything in our world. In fact, the numbers are incomplete.

The dirth of minority diagnosis, as well as female diagnosis, is misleading.  To say that there is less autism in Alabama than New Jersey is disingenuous. There needs to be a study as to how many parents request school evaluations, how many were denied and what happened to the child in each district. There should also be a study as to how many of those that present with autism in poor districts are actually diagnosed with ED or ADD instead simply because those school districts have programs for these issues and not for autism. Also rich districts as opposed to poor districts seem to have a vast difference in diagnosis. This points not to a medical condition specific to those in different economic brackets, but lack of education, lack of access and dismissal of issues in the poorer school districts. Or even intimidation by school officials to stop parents from seeking answers and requiring the poor districts to spend money that they might not have. How many times in Alabama, lets say, do the police get called with a child with possible autism acts out as opposed to NJ? How many times is a child with possible autism in Alabama made a juvenile offender rather than getting them the help they need?

Also the idea that autism is more prevalent in males than females could also be a false flag. As it was with ADD, scientists used to say that this learning disability  presents more in boys. Only decades after this esoteric announcement by the psychiatric field was it established that girls generally present ADD at the same rate as boys, they just present it differently. I submit that this will be the same with autism. Heck they used to say women had less of a chance of having a heart attack than a man, until a study was done showing that heart disease is the biggest killer of women. That doctors only used male-characteristic for heart evaluation when again, women presented with heart disease different than men. That when a woman died of a heart attack the medical field generally proscribed the death to some other cause.

Honestly, I am tired of the number crunching that is inherent in these studies. Society knows that autism is a reality in our world and that the number is growing. The question is what is society going to do to help those on the spectrum? Just telling us that there is a problem is something we already know. It is about time that someone came up with an answer. Parents really can't do it all on their own. Yes, we need help and understanding, for our adult children.