CDC: Autism, ADHD rates on the rise

(Health.com) -- The proportion of children and teens in the U.S. who have a developmental disability such as autism has increased 17% since the late 1990s, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Between 1997 and 2008, the number of children with a disability rose from 8.2 million to roughly 10 million, or more than 15% of all kids between the ages of 3 and 17, the researchers found.

This upward trend has been driven largely by surges in the number of children found to have autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, although the prevalence of stuttering and learning disabilities has also increased.

The study, which appears in the June issue of the journal Pediatrics, is the first time nationally representative data on developmental disabilities has been collected since 1988, says Sheree Boulet, Dr.P.H., one of the study's authors and an epidemiologist at the CDC's National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities.

Full story: http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/05/23/autism.adhd.increase.cdc/index.html

or have we gotten better at identifying and diagnosing the kids who have the disability?

You can look at absolute numbers, which ARE going up, but then you look at the increased emphasis on diagnosing it, and the broader spectrum of cases which would be considered autism or ADHD compared to years ago, and those present an argument that it's not really increasing, just expanding.

Some **cough** years ago. Nope, we didn't have any autistic kids in our school. However, we did have a whole special ed room for "retarded" kids. I now visit my son's school. They don't have any "retarded" kids. What happened to the "retarded" children? Why isn't anyone concerned about these disappearing people? Oh wait...

Just to say.