About Autism's prevalence...

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There is evidence that antisocial individuals , demonstrated detectable antisocial behaviours since childhood. However children cannot (and probably should not) be given a psychopathy/sociopathy label.
Caregivers and professionals rarely distinguish between asocial and antisocial behaviour .

Do you think that the above points (if true) skew the results of autism's prevalence? If so to which extend?

People have called me anti social even though the correct term would be asocial. There are people who claim they have autism in order to excuse their horrible and nasty behavior when they really probably are anti social.

In America there is a massive push to get kids diagnosed as early as possible, so they can receive ABA. No consideration is given to the possibility that children mature at different rates and that one skill may develop slowly while another skill may develop earlier than average. If a marker is missed a lot parents panic.

It is a noticeable trend in these fora(the parenting subforum moreso), parents and spouses misinterpret autistic's behaviour as manipulation, lying, stealing and so on , in the meantime those who are faced with actual antisocial people misattribute that to autism.


There is a current study about the US which is currently circulating the internet news sites. It states that the number of new diagnoses remained stable for the last few years ... but is still way too high, double the population percentage that I would expect to be autistic. But I'm aware of my biases towards the topic. That prompted me to start that thread to be sincere.

I think it happens, but I have no idea to what extent.
I just know that I've seen reports of autistic youth offenders whose traits seem much more aligned to a personality disorder than to ASD, making me think they may have been wrongly diagnosed. This is so bad for autistics in general, because it bolsters the incorrect stereotype of us as uncaring and antisocial.

aaaaand I just noticed I typed that wrong and can no longer edit the original post.

Parents get way too competitive over their kids' milestones. Parents want to brag about how quickly their kids reached a certain milestone. They panic if their kids didn't reach the milestone first. There are parents that want to put a trendy label on their kid to look cool or avoid dealing with their kids' behavior. I have known parents that had their kids get an autism diagnosis when they really have ADHD.