this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2026
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Isn‘t autism and many other psychological conditions under and over diagnosed at the same time? A friend of mine got her diagnosis at the age of 31 (under diagnosed) and her doctor talked with her about social media bringing more people to her, which think they have autism, but don‘t (over diagnosing).
I don‘t want to talk anyone out of their diagnosis or give them doubts. As long as there are tests there will always be false negatives and positives and so if you test more it will influence the outcome.
PS: The article is probably bullshit.
Yeah, and there does seem to be an increasing number of people who self-diagnose medical conditions such as autism, and then use them as excuses for their own shitty behavior.
Or sometimes that of others. I had a relative try to excuse Elon's bullshit as autism. No, aunt Grace, autism does not make people throw out Nazi salutes.
Often it's the same people who dismiss legitimate challenges other people face due to medical conditions yet have one of their own (self-diagnosed) they use to excuse shitty behavior.
What you're describing isn't really an over-diagnosis thing though, it's more that visibility has increased and the stigma has been reduced, so more people go to a professional to have it investigated.
Over-diagnosis would be people who actually get diagnosed with autism but end up not having it.
I think the criteria and diagnosis evolving as the science gets better also has an impact. The idea that only young boys have autism was the prevalent one not that long ago, but we know better now so now more people are being diagnosed with it since we understand it better.
I'm trans and wasn't diagnosed as a kid because i had high masking autism ("girl autism") instead of the "boy autism" they were looking for.
I disagree, I think the anecdote of an adult over 30 years of age being diagnosed is a fair example of under-diagnosis. And since your comment was more on the over-diagnosis side, I think it’s fair to point out. That the visibility and lowered stigma contribute to the over-diagnosing. It can’t be helped. Medical professionals are subject to the same biases of visibility that the rest of us are, even if they should know better.
Also some patients are certainly self-diagnosing based on freely available information, be it valid or not, and sharing their diagnosis as if it was a real one. When others encounter these claims, their instinct typically isn’t to argue or accuse someone of being a fake autist so they update their own mental models with a “this is what autism looks like” and the trend continues.
Ah, I misinterpreted you then, that's my bad. :)
It is exactly what I am describing. In any test you will have false positives. Then the broader you test the more false positives you get. This was also a thing during Corona in Germany. At the start of the pandemic only people with symptoms should get tested, because with low case number and even a very good test and test procedure you can easily get more false positives than true positives. This is true for every test where true positives are rare. The math is pretty simple here.
Well, there's two things to consider.
One is just how many folks "self diagnose". Rather than a stigma being reduced, it's often held up as a trait of superiority to the "normies", so some folks will assert it. There's a fine line to walk between unfair stigma versus unjustified glorification. The internet is full of this.
Two is that ultimately, there's room for being subjective even among professionals. See the parents of a kid that my kid was friends with. They lamented they got told by 5 psychologists that their kid was not autistic before they finally found one that "correctly" saw the kid's autism. They were so excited to have proof that their kid was one of those autistic folks that are super smart...
I'm not sure this would count towards any statistics of over-diagnosis though, as a self-diagnosis isn't a diagnosis.
This is true. Ultimately it's humans judging humans and there will be errors in the process.
Good example. It‘s not only about how many people take a test, but also if the test is taken multiple times. Then you are in realm of statistics.
Probably to find the true result would be to consult those earlier doctors with the diagnosis of that last doctor. They might have missed something (or not).