The school-aged autism prevalence rate in Northern Ireland for 2025/2026 is 6.2% https://www.health-ni.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2026-05/asd-children-ni-2026.pdf
Last year - 2024/2025 - it was 5.9%.
The prevalence rate of autism in boys in Northern Ireland for 2025/2026 is 8.6%. Last year (2024/2025) it was 8.3%.
The sustained upwards trend of childhood autism continues. An avalanche of children presenting with clinically relevant autism and being diagnosed as such. And even more needs waiting in the wings as per the huge waiting lists for autism assessment.
Reasons? Well 'all better awareness' is something best left for the 1990s. It would be a brave (or stupid) person who takes up that gauntlet. 'Expanding diagnostic criteria' will probably have played a role, but bear in mind these figures have already included the change in data collection that happened in 2019/2020 which accounted for this.
No, there is something else driving this tsunami of disability. And there's no such thing as a genetic epidemic...
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