Estimating the Prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorder in New South Wales, Australia: A Data Linkage Study of Three Routinely Collected Datasets.
Timothy C Nielsen, Natasha Nassar, Kelsie A Boulton and 2 others
PMID 36652127WHAT IT FOUND
Most recorded autism cases in New South Wales children came from disability services records, not hospital or mental health contacts.
Boys were much more likely to be recorded, and age six rates rose by birth year.
Key findings
01In a cohort of 1,211,834 NSW births, 12,921 children (1.1%) had a recorded ASD diagnosis.
02Disability services data identified 86.8% of children with ASD, and 72% were identified by disability services data alone.
03ASD prevalence at age 6 increased an average of 4.1% per year, while intellectual disability prevalence decreased an average of 8.3% per year.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The study counts recorded diagnoses in public service, hospital, and mental health records, not all autism. It says children may never be diagnosed or may use private providers or school accommodations. Age at first service, admission, or encounter is not age at diagnosis, so age-specific rates reflect contact with systems, not onset. No gold standard was available, so sensitivity and specificity of each data source could not be calculated. Disability services eligibility requires a specialist diagnosis and receipt of publicly funded services, which may miss people who do not enter that system. The ambulatory mental health dataset excluded general practitioners and private specialists and recorded only one diagnosis per encounter. Trends may be affected by changes in funding, diagnostic criteria, and service access rather than true changes in autism.
Declared interests
The paper lists the National Health and Medical Research Council as funder. No other conflicts are given in the supplied text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not treat 1.3% at age 12 as the true prevalence. It is a recorded diagnosis count across three public datasets, and the paper says cases may be missed if children were never diagnosed or used private providers or school accommodations.