Study Finds Rise in Autism May Be Due to Semantics

A team at Penn State University has found a significant error in the portrayal of the rising autism rate for U.S. children.
The study suggests that more kids are being diagnosed with autism as the result of poor classification standards.
They added the rate seems to have drastically increased because cases are simply being classified and diagnosed differently.
The researchers published that two-thirds of the increased autism cases could result from reclassification.
Focusing on 11 years of special-education enrollment data covering more than 6 million children a year, the researched found that the rise in autism could be offset by a noticeable decrease in the diagnosis of other mental issues.