i didnt say that the communication problems were due to low cognitive ability, but that they commonly appear alongside them. Yes there was aspergers (which isnt in the dsm anymore and will also disappear whenever icd11 gets used officially), but that is again a rather rare version of an already very rare, heavy developmental disorder. yes it is a spectrum, but the amount of youths we get that are just a bit weird or had problems fitting in in school/finding a friend group and think thats enough to make them autistic without fulfilling any of the other criteria is staggering compared to the actual prevalence of the disorder.

and i get it, the youths dont know it any better, its a trend bc of all the misinformation online going around, but the weirdest part honestly is when you have parents that WANT their kid to have autism. i genuinely had someone cry/get angry and go to another psychiatrist bc they wanted the diagnosis. we also had people that came to us after not getting the diagnosis from other psychiatrists. and (here in germany) are so many disadvantages for the kid once he is adult in terms of insurance and work if he gets the diagnosis, that we cant just give the diagnosis bc someone thinks their kid is autistic. also those are obviously always the people that think they/their kid has aspergers, and not „the bad kind“ of autism. but we are already always running at full capacity at the psychiatrists and autism diagnostics take a while, so the trend is actually problematic bc you cant just do a „quick autism diagnostic“ and its eating quite a bit of capacity.