The Autism Epidemic

The Autism Epidemic


So Robert J Kennedy Jr has declared that autism is going to be the next focus… because he’s cut funding for research towards pretty much everything else. So, by September we are supposed to know the cause of this supposed “autism epidemic.” Except, if you know anything about how psychiatrists diagnose autism, then you already know about “why” said “epidemic” is occurring. He just doesn’t have five minutes or the correctly educated staffing to know how to proceed with this “mysterious knowledge, so let me give you a quick background without looking anything up, but from what I’ve learned in social work classes, okay?

Health insurance companies like neat little boxes called “diagnoses” in which to fit a person’s symptoms. From there, they can base what medications and therapies a person might “qualify for” based on their algorithms or whatever. I’m not a health insurance person, but I know about the textbook psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers use to make their diagnoses. As we learn more about how the brain works, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) gets updated every few years. It used to be that homosexuality was in the DSM as a deviant behavior. It is no longer listed in the DSM. As our understandings change, so does the DSM. Do you see where I’m going with this?

A few years ago, they came out with the DSM V (5). Everyone was all excited about it, but as it contains the entirety of all the diagnoses of everything mental health related, it took quite a while to be put into effect and for people to fully understand and diagnose according to the new standards. Imagine all of the highest levels of math made into one textbook, and that’s what you have. Or all of even one department of one medical field in one textbook! Yeah, it takes some getting used to. That is why the person in charge of health needs advisors who know what they are doing and are highly educated. This “autism epidemic” started years ago when the DSM-V came out, and it changed the way autism was diagnosed.

Now, this I didn’t learn in class. I learned it through the online message boards and Facebook, so take it as you will, but a change in the way the DSM diagnoses something like autism could make a lot more people fall under that umbrella, right? I mean, imagine instead of all these categories of mental and physical health diagnoses, we went backwards in time. The cures for things were a lot simpler back then. Blood letting and leeches. Changing of the four humours. Demon possession. If we went back to when we didn’t understand what caused symptoms, the “cures” would be “simple.” There would be a lot more death, yes, but isn’t that about to be what’s happening now? 

Saying you want to find “a cure” for a diagnosis that simply expanded its diagnostic criteria is just a waste of time and resources. Where should the real focus be? What are they trying to hide? Perhaps getting rid of the IDEA which helps those with different abilities in the classroom learn at a similar speed would be a good place to start. The current head of the Department of Education didn’t even know what it stood for, yet she was gutting it. Because who needs something that you’ve never even heard of, especially when you’re perfectly able-bodied??? First they take away what helps people with different abilities learn in the classroom. Then they strip funding for research and disallow certain words in research proposals. Next they make it their aim to focus on finding the cause of something that takes five minutes of research to figure out.

What are they actually doing?

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