Seeing as April is Autism Awareness Month, more media attention is being paid to the autism spectrum of disorders than at any other time.  As a result, many of these articles are about the rise of autism.  Is it an epidemic or simply a rise in diagnoses?  Today, Autism News Direct will provide you links to several different stories that address this question from a variety of viewpoints.

Autism is on the rise, why? from Medical Condition News

There is no question that autism is on the rise and the statistics speak volumes about this dramatic increase,” says Michelle Rowe, Ph.D., a professor of health services at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.

She reports that this year alone it is estimated that 24,000 children will be diagnosed.

“It’s important for people to understand the higher number of diagnoses is not because the criteria for autism has expanded,” explains Rowe. “It is actually harder now than it was in 1980, when autism was first introduced as a disorder, to meet the criteria.”

Rowe credits early intervention with helping children with autism meet their full potential, but understands that it can be tricky to point out signs in the very young. She says that parents can begin seeing “red flags” as early as 12 months if they know what to look for.

Rise in autism related to changes in diagnosis from Medical Condition News 

Research funded by the Wellcome Trust suggests that many children diagnosed with severe language disorders in the 1980s and 1990s would today be diagnosed as having autism.

The research supports the theory that the rise in the number of cases of autism may be related to changes in how it is diagnosed.

Professor Dorothy Bishop, a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, led a study which revisited 38 adults, aged between 15-31, who had been diagnosed with having developmental language disorders as children rather than being autistic. Professor Bishop and colleagues looked at whether they now met current diagnostic criteria for autistic spectrum disorders, either through reports of their childhood behaviour or on the basis of their current behaviour. The results are published this month in the journal Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology.

The Autism “Epidemic” at Associated Content

Some would argue that environmental triggers, most notably the increase in childhood vaccinations, have led to an increase in autism. Others state that there is no true epidemic but that the expansion of the diagnostic criteria in the Diagnostic and Statistics Manual of Mental Disorders version IV (DSM-IV) for autism and related conditions, along with the inclusion of Asperger’s Syndrome in 1994, have led to the dramatic rise.