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[92] [94] The rates of suicide attempts are the same among people formally diagnosed with autism and those who have typical intelligence and are believed to have autism but have not been diagnosed. [92] The suicide risk is lower among cisgender autistic males and autistic people with intellectual disabilities.
The age at which ASD is diagnosed varies. Sometimes ASD can be diagnosed as early as 18 months, however, diagnosis of ASD before the age of two years may not be reliable. [4] Diagnosis becomes increasingly stable over the first three years of life.
[290] [291] Several interventions can help children with autism, [292] and no single treatment is best, with treatment typically tailored to the child's needs. [293] Studies of interventions have methodological problems that prevent definitive conclusions about efficacy , [ 294 ] but the development of evidence-based interventions has advanced.
There are several justifications for this. Very young children have limited social interaction and communication skills to begin with, so it can be difficult to correctly diagnose milder cases of autism in toddlers. The unspoken assumption is that by the age of five, unusual behaviors will either resolve or develop into diagnosable autism.
The CHAT was initially developed in the early 1990s to screen for autism in children as young as 18 months. Prior to this point, diagnosis of autism was rare in children younger than 3 years old. [2] Additionally, no specialized screening tool had been developed to detect early signs of autism in young children. [3]
The first stage stratifies children into 3 group- low risk, medium risk, and high risk. Children who are medium risk go to the second stage for further clarification. A child whose score was greater than 3 at the first screening and greater than 2 on the second screening had a 47.5% risk of being diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. [6]
ASD averages a 4.3:1 male-to-female ratio. The number of children diagnosed with the autism spectrum has increased dramatically since the 1980s, at least partly due to changes in diagnostic practice; it is unclear whether prevalence has actually increased; [3] and as-yet-unidentified environmental risk factors cannot be ruled out. [4]
[1] [5] Second, the likelihood of having a child develop autism increases with advancing parental age, and mutations in sperm gradually accumulate throughout a man's life. [ 1 ] [ 17 ] The first genes to be definitively shown to contribute to risk for autism were found in the early 1990s by researchers looking at gender-specific forms of autism ...