this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2026
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Every now and then modern medicine will focus on some disease,, study it more, try to understand what it is and what causes it, and why it is so severe.
Before, they didn't diagnose many people with autism unless it was super obvious, like someone who had the most severe symptoms, nonverbal, smearing poop, etc. They would maybe call that autism.
Back then, if a child was nonverbal they might just say "oh yeah my brother is a little 'slow', he doesn't understand what you're asking him".
And when they study it more, try to find out all the symptoms, they find out it's a range of symptoms that are more present than we realized. They discover that the same nonverbal behavior might show up in a much wider population but go away earlier for most, and some of those people exhibit other symptoms that were mostly being ignored.
So suddenly a lot more people start getting diagnosed with autism because they understand the wider range of symptoms and that it's a larger spectrum of things. Shit, maybe multiple issues that are comorbid. Maybe ADHD is its own class of thing that is often comorbid. Maybe there's a better way of treating people if they just show ADHD. Maybe some symptoms aren't worth treating. Etc
So you end up with conservative folks who were like, "why is autism so common now? It wasn't so big back in my day. Must be something causing this autism."
Well shit it's hard to say because it's likely they just realized how to diagnose it now, and also they diagnose more people with it who would have been ignored before.
Lack of understanding of the underlying issue is part of the problem, plain ignorance. The other aspect is if you accept it's a spectrum and understand the symptoms more, they diagnose it more if someone comes in with less symptoms. So yeah they see it a lot more places.
People used to demonize those that went to psychiatrists and psychologists. You didn't go unless you were "crazy". Depression wasn't a thing. They freaked out that depressed people were seeking treatment. For some people, they really just don't like change.