Pressure on Diagnostic Services In recent years, adult autism diagnostic services have come under exceptional pressure. Referral rates have surged, far outpacing clinical capacity, and exposing systemic limitations in provision. The consequences are stark. An NHS-funded diagnostic service in Oxfordshire, for example, recently closed its waiting list after estimating that it could take until 2043 to process its backlog of over 2,000 patients. For individuals referred before 20

In recent years, increasing attention has been devoted to the phenomenon of autism diagnosis in adolescence and adulthood . Waiting lists for assessment have grown rapidly. In England, for example, the average waiting time for an autism diagnosis reached 300 days , substantially exceeding the 91-day target recommended by NICE (Fagg & Woodhead 2023). The rising demand for assessment reflects a broader shift in public awareness and clinical practice. Public discussion often pre

Autism has long been described as a lifelong neurodevelopmental disorder/condition. Core behavioural features, typically emerging in infancy or early childhood, have been assumed to persist throughout the lifespan. The research, however, suggests that within the vast heterogeneity of autism , not all individuals follow a single, fixed trajectory. Various reports have documented the presentation of " acquired autism " ( regression ) following a period of typical development.

This post continues a critical analysis of a list of memes titled What Not to Say to an Autistic Person . The first “not to” – “You don’t look autistic”  – was examined in the previous post . Here, we turn to two further entries on that list: “ We’re all on the spectrum ”  and “ Everyone is a bit autisti c .” Both statements are routinely dismissed as ignorant and/or offensive. Yet their persistence suggests that something more than simple misunderstanding is at work. These p

A Simplification That Simplifies Nothing The 5 th  edition, published in 2013, set out to simplify and modernise the nosology of autism-related disorders, replacing the DSM-IV’s cluster of Pervasive Developmental Disorders (PDDs) — Autistic Disorder, Asperger’s Disorder, Childhood Disintegrative Disorder, Rett’s Disorder [ 1 ] and PDD-Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS) — with a single diagnosis: Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The intent was, in principle, laudable: a spectrum

The question of how stable an autism diagnosis is over time has long been debated. While many families and clinicians view an autism diagnosis as lifelong, research suggests that diagnostic stability—how consistently a diagnosis persists over time—depends heavily on which diagnostic framework is used. Emerging evidence indicates that before the introduction of the broader ASD category in the DSM-5  (APA 2013), autism diagnoses were more stable and predictable. Before DSM-5: D