The definition of autism has been so expanded as to make it a worthless diagnosis. My cousin was diagnosed with it in the 80s so I’m familiar. Every time I see the 1 in 124 stat on commercials I roll my eyes, knowing that too many people are going to believe it.
Autism exists, and it used to have definite symptoms. Now, any child—typically a boy—who has odd behaviors is automatically considered autistic regardless of the symptoms.
Autism today is a diagnosis in search of a symptom.
Actually, it's a label in search of federal funding.
While I was at work on Monday night, I had heard that autism diagnoses had gone up something like 600% in the past 30 years or so (so just a little longer than my own lifetime). Then I got to thinking: isn’t this kind of being over-diagnosed? When I was 7, I had a child psychologist actually say to my parents that I was actually autistic. She was unusually strident about it and about her diagnosis being correct that my parents almost thought about home schooling me from there on out.