While I was at work on Monday night, I had heard that autism diagnoses had gone up something like 600% in the past 30 years or so (so just a little longer than my own lifetime). Then I got to thinking: isn’t this kind of being over-diagnosed? When I was 7, I had a child psychologist actually say to my parents that I was actually autistic. She was unusually strident about it and about her diagnosis being correct that my parents almost thought about home schooling me from there on out.
Home schooling is a good idea, and something I wish I’d had. (public school, ick). But a lot of times these shrinks are in the profession to figure themselves out.