Is Mild Autism Being Overdiagnosed?

Not long ago, autism was considered rare, but now it’s fairly common: Autism diagnoses in children have increased nearly fivefold across the United States in the past couple of decades, from one in every 150 8-year-olds in 2000 to one in every 31 in 2022. Adult diagnoses have also gone up rapidly in recent years. According to many researchers, a significant portion of this growth comes from a rise in diagnoses of milder forms of autism—cases in which people may have a normal to high IQ and…