Yep. I think more people need to be able to say/think “actually I don’t know enough on this particular issue” and either choose to step back or to actively learn, ask good faith questions and actually start to have an understanding before they start to form opinions.

Nobody knows enough about everything to have an opinion and it’s actually okay not to have an opinion or to be curious before forming and sharing one!

Diagnosis can and does get retracted, or added to, altered etc. But only some get the spotlight. The rhetoric around autism being particularly misdiagnosed or “over-diagnosed” at the moment is really dangerous.

No. It’s actually really well documented why there’s been an increase.

Previously women were seen as less likely to be autistic and often considered for other diagnoses without considering autism. This was also the case for POC.

Secondly, until 2014 ADHD and autism were exclusive diagnoses - if you had one you couldn’t have the other. Now they have realized that they actually occur together naturally diagnoses for both have increased.

Asperger’s is no longer diagnosed in a lot of places (only since around 2015, depending on location) therefore these diagnoses are now joining autism diagnosis numbers.

Access to healthcare, more education, more research than ever before and an ever increasing understanding that autism can occur with or without a low IQ.

Naught to do with insurance and everything to do with fantastic people who have done a lot of research to deepen the understanding of autism and include previously excluded people in a diagnosis that has no exclusions (any colour, any gender, any IQ level, any culture, any age).

The comparison they are making is that there was a stage where all of a sudden a bunch of people were claiming to de-transition and people believe it was a kind of co-ordinated thing to “prove” that transgender was just some kind of fad. OL is saying now that they are doing a similar thing with autistic people going back on their diagnosis and that the strings are being pulled by those who want to “prove” that autism is being over-diagnosed.

Essentially, it’s the “strategy” being used that’s comparable. It’s designed with an agenda.

I’ll consider this discussion when people start discussing how often people are misdiagnosed and mis-medicated for mental illnesses and other illnesses. But whilst it’s just a narrow attack on one or two diagnoses (autism and ADHD) it’s not a discussion that’s being had in good faith. It’s one with an agenda.