Look at conditions like Type1 diabetes which is growing ~3% per year! This isn’t just better diagnostics but explained by the stress diathesis model of disease interacting with our modern synthetic world.

[–] protist@mander.xyz 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The cases are on average more extreme now though

This is based on your personal experience and not the evidence, which does not bear that out

[–] Glasgow@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Please present this evidence that rules what I said out.

Took 2s to find this

https://fortune.com/well/2023/04/19/rate-of-profound-autism-rising-not-as-fast-as-milder-cases/

[–] protist@mander.xyz 5 points 3 months ago

That article doesn't say what you seem to think it says. It only talks about an increase in diagnosed cases, which can be explained away by more frequent assessments, better awareness of symptoms, the loosening of diagnostic criteria in the DSM IV, and over-diagnosis to get children with other severe developmental disorders qualified for services. There are lots of reasons we know about that autism is being diagnosed more frequently, but the best you're going to get on your hypothesis is "we don't know."

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-real-reasons-autism-rates-are-up-in-the-u-s/

Experts say the bulk of the increase stems from a growing awareness of autism and changes to the condition’s diagnostic criteria.

https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev.publhealth.28.021406.144007

Environmental risk factors may also play a role, perhaps via complex gene-environment interactions, but no specific exposures with significant population effects are known

https://www.autismspeaks.org/autism-statistics-asd

Autism prevalence is lower among white children than other racial and ethnic groups:

White – 2.4%, Black – 2.9%, Hispanic – 3.2%, Asian or Pacific Islander – 3.3%

These changes reflect an improvement in outreach, screening and de-stigmatization of autism diagnosis among minority communities.

[–] Sas@beehaw.org 2 points 3 months ago

People also get a lot better at masking as they get older so younger people's autism appears more severe than older people's. Same is probably true for ADHD