You gotta love this overdiagnosis epidemic.

The methodology for this survey is too flawed for anyone to do anything more than laugh at.  The other day I had a call from a bank about customer satisfaction. My son took the call and told innumberable lies, we don't even bank there! 

Well, I haven't done any research on autism, but i have listened to some television shows on autism and have noticed some trends within our society. I honestly do not think it has anything to do with environmental factors.  a lot of the problem with people saying that things are "getting worse" with tme is usually an overdramatization.  1) it probably isn't that more people are developing autism, it's probably that with the advancement of medicinse, we are able to recognize cases easier which means more people aren't developing autism, but that people have the symptoms of autism and are able to be diagnosed correctly. (it's the same as crime rates, more often than not, it's because more people are reporting crime, not that it's getting worse). and 2). tons of people get vaccines and few people develop autism. there is not correlation between autism and vaccines. the evidence that "backs up" the vaccine/autism relations is so invalid and are reported by people who already believe this to be the case that they look for the correlation.

honestly, i feel autism to be a genetic factor. there is a show on discovery health where a family has 7 children who ALL have autism. so obviously something is genetic if all the children they had have autism. now, i'm not a geneticist and i'm not an expert on this at all....but going by what i've observed and what i do already know about vaccines and statistics, autism is not directly or indirectly related to vaccines (no mercury does not cause autism and it is not in any vaccines that are given out now) and statistics change because of the increase or decrease in reports (not cases).

I have always had this theory, that the more we sterilize everything and kill all these germs and avoid the things we are allergic to, or could make us sick, that it's not helping but instead hurting us. Because we are no longer exposed to all these things that can harm us, we no longer build up immunities to these things, and when we loose that, we become weaker and weaker because what one generation was used to the next have never experienced it and when exposed, are more susceptible to illness.

 But when we get into genetics, as generation after generation are getting less immune the next batch will be even weaker. So that when they are born they have things like Autism and schizophrenic, or develop more allergies and can be effected to things like cancer.

Now, I'm not saying go jump into a pool full of mold, but try not to be so concerned that you might get sick or hurt and just have fun. You don't need to be so worried about your kids safety that you bleach all there toys. Still be clean but don't be such a germaphobe that you end up ruining your children's live and maybe even your grandchildren. Maybe if we don't reach for the Clorox as much and just use hot water and some soap instead. Maybe these number over time will fall to less of a critical thing.

@lonelywonderingdarksoul@xanga - Actually I like the idea of jumping in a pool of mold! just kidding.

i found the videos on the child schizophrenics interesting.  i like that Jani made a friend in Becca.

My psychiatrists wouldn't diagnose me with schizophrenia when I was an adolescent.  They generally try not to if they can avoid it.   Instead, I was diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder, recurring, severe with psychotic features.  And by psychotic features, it mean I had 7 voices constantly talking to me (some fairly harmless, some almost demonic), I saw people who weren't there, and I believed I was a martyred queen from another planet, brought to Earth in my infancy to be hidden from the people who destroyed my world in a civil war.

It wasn't until I was 21 that I was "upgraded" to schizoaffective disorder (schizophrenia + major depressive disorder).

I worry that too many children are getting diagnosed prematurely these days.  I mean, sure, I had imaginary friends when I was a kid, too, and they were actually there and talked to me (aka visual and auditory hallucinations).  I still don't think I would've been diagnosed with schizophrenia had my parents or doctors known the extent of it.

EDIT:

Those videos on Oprah.com are hauntingly similar to my own childhood.... 

I had my own language (I thought my name was Touno ia'k'nen Rehtahla, and I had glyphs to spell it in the language that one of my "Guardians" taught me), saw shadow people, thought I went in a purple bus to visit my imaginary friends, Sarah and Jimmy (both girls), in a dance class that was adjoined to a mechanic's shop, etc.  I remember even making a dinosaur diorama for dance class once.