I 100% agree a pregnant woman should be super careful about everything they eat or get exposed to. and I do not question that SSRI’s may lead to birth defects if taken during pregnancy(lots of things can do that not just medicines)
but what I fear the most about this study is that it will be used by a descent size core group of ignorant people who for some reason despise meds people need for mental health.(snap out of it, toughen up, get a stiff upper lip, quit worrying, its the parents fault etc) I have seen many people who have gotten on the right dose of the right ssri(which can take a while for them and their doctor to find the right one/dose) bounce back from debilitating anxiety, depression etc…hopefully in the near future a new generation of these drugs will come out…but in the meanwhile…these drugs are very effective for many people. and I hope this does not prevent people needing these meds to push them away.(pregnant woman are of course a different group and must absolutely make some extremely hard choices with their ob/gyn)
I have no opinion as to whether SSRI’s are a link…maybe so.
It does bother me that suddenly we have this huge increase in the number of spectrum children (and peanut butter allergies!).
While it might be argued that those with more milder forms weren’t being Dx’d, surely we would have noticed those with more severe forms…and now virtually all of us know children with quite severe forms. My friend’s grandson has an extremely severe form…and he appeared completely normal for his first 18 months! She babysat everyday, and grandson went from happily pushing a ball back and forth to her on the carpet everyday, to suddenly acting like he’d never seen the ball before (the first obvious sign which caused her to warn her adult child to get him to a doctor)
When I was growing up in the 60s, we never or rarely had classmates with peanut butter allergies…now there are 2-4 in every class! I never knew ANYONE with a peanut allergy until my sister met her future husband (who was born in France and lived all over…AF Brat…so I always wondered if he was exposed to something different.)
I think maybe cell phone use and the radiation exposure during pregnancy. people laugh at me. but that is one thing that has changed in the last 15-20 years. so maybe a low dose of radiation exposure from the phone is enough to damage a developing fetus? I am not sure of course but I think it may have some merit and the increase of cell phone use and increase in autism does seem to track with each other.
I’m guessing it is virtually impossible to find a cause and effect. You see this with cancer hot spots too. The question is going to be now that the first big boom of kids on the spectrum are leaving school, what becomes of them? Our society is not set up to handle this well.
Theories aren’t useful unless you have a precise mechanism by which you believe such-and-such happens, that is backed up with reasonable science. It’s one thing to think “radiation exposure from a phone damages a developing fetus” - it sure sounds plausible to me - but I’m no scientist, and you’ve got to have the appropriate biochemical pathways, etc. to make a theory worth investigating. “Cell phones feel scary and yucky” isn’t enough.
pizzagirl…in no way did I say I know for for sure…just a thought I had…I would never claim that as fact! but it would be a good avenue for scientists to look into.(IMO) the vaccine scare from the last 20 years was complete garbage. this could be a dead end too.
I do think it could be a combination of a virus and genetics. My SIL and her brother both were fine as children, got some kind of mild flu and became dyslexic literally overnight (they were the only members of the family affected this way).
And what about gluten intolerance, all the auto-immune issues?
Oh please. I don’t think it’s an increase in autism, I think it’s an increase in diagnosis. Kids are told they’re “on the spectrum” who would have been “shy” or “odd” forty years ago.
I have a copy of my grandfather’s 30-page memoir of his career as an automotive engineer (starting in 1905, when he was placed as an observer in Rolls’ car during a cross-England race, to verify that Rolls followed the rules). He is very clearly “on the spectrum” just based on his writings (I never knew him, as he died in 1945). It definitely runs in the family, right along with the webbed toes. But none of us have been formally diagnosed until the current youngest generation.
Science magazine has a new story up that says the study about SSRIs did not correct for the increased chance of a mom with a disease that leads her to take SSRIs having a child with ASD.
I found this article interesting regarding the substitution of “autism” as a diagnosis for cases that were previously diagnosed as “intellectual disability”.
When I was a child, my parents talked about 2 families in our small church who had institutionalized a child: one with Down syndrome and one with what didn’t seem to have a name then but looking back was severe autism. One of the things that makes it seem more like there is an autism epidemic is that severe cases are no longer institutionalized far from home.
But if we are wondering about increases in peanut allergies, gluten issues, what about asthma? I didn’t know a soul,with asthma when I was growing up. That has increased exponentially as well.
I agree that in some cases it is an increase in Dx, especially with milder forms…which likely before were just considered to be personality quirks.
However, the more moderate to severe forms would not likely have gone unnoticed by the medical community. In my friend’s grandson’s case, he went from a happy responsive active baby (saying “da da” and “ma ma” and “ball”) to a severe spectrum case…not recognizing familiar toys, not saying any words anymore…virtually overnight.
I have always been a little leery about carpet cleaners and those chemicals. Little ones crawling around the floor being exposed.
Asthma is highly depenedent on where you live. Where I grew up, and where my dad grew up, has incredibly high rates of asthma because of the factories. We’re both asthmatic though it got much better after we moved from factorylandia.
The reason for the increase in asthma and allergies isn’t really a mystery.
Further, asthma used to be deadly but far less so now. So people with severe asthma often died in early childhood.
What makes you think they went unnoticed, m2ck? They didn’t. They were just labeled retarded or feebleminded and often institutionalized or otherwise hidden away.
There was a study published in the journal Pediatrics earlier this year in which the authors show that changes in reporting practices account for more than 60% of the increase in autism diagnoses. It’s a very thorough report and a well-done study.
Awareness has increased AND surveillance is better AND the definition of “what is autism” has changed dramatically over the past twenty years. I read somewhere that the great majority of people diagnosed with autism and autism spectrum disorders today would never have qualified under the classification that was used back in the 70s and 80s.
I think there is a cause to this, but it could just be a combination of lots of factors (genetic, environmental), and I don’t know if just using antidepressants, in the last trimesters, is a sure fire way to diagnose it.
I had an “autistic” client whose mother was grossly overweight-pre and post natal. This was about 20 years ago. They did some genetic testing (because mom wanted to have another child-NOT recommended by anyone), and supposedly everything was fine. Then sibling is born. Five years later, sibling is also diagnosed as “autistic”. Then she wanted to have another baby “to prove them wrong”!
I’ve had to work with a large number of teens and adults on the spectrum. It is/was really hard on a daily basis. No two person’s behaviors are the same and it affects (stresses) the family, as well as the rehab community.