Comments on: Prevalence of Autism among Amish http://EBDBlog.com/2008/06/amish_autism/ News, commentary, resources, and more about Emotional and Behavioral Disorders. Wed, 04 Apr 2012 20:22:25 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Joseph http://EBDBlog.com/2008/06/amish_autism/comment-page-1/#comment-52545 Joseph Tue, 03 Jun 2008 13:51:00 +0000 http://EBDBlog.com/?p=377#comment-52545 Thanks for the link. It is in fact difficult to make a comparison. The Amish of Pennsylvania have something called "The Clinic For Special Children" that specializes in genetic syndromes, where autistic children are apparently referred. The same is not true of California I think, but on the other hand, it would be reasonable to suppose there's more awareness of autism in California and a lot more specialists able to diagnose autism. Of course, what I reported was an absolute minimum prevalence. It is actually quite possible that the Amish have a much higher prevalence of low functioning autism (mostly syndromic) than the general population. I say that because of the following. <blockquote>The Amish are 12 percent of the local population, but their children represent close to half of the area's most severe cases of mental and physical retardation.</blockquote> (<a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E04E7DF153FF933A15755C0A9649C8B63" rel="nofollow">source</a>) Thanks for the link. It is in fact difficult to make a comparison. The Amish of Pennsylvania have something called “The Clinic For Special Children” that specializes in genetic syndromes, where autistic children are apparently referred. The same is not true of California I think, but on the other hand, it would be reasonable to suppose there’s more awareness of autism in California and a lot more specialists able to diagnose autism.

Of course, what I reported was an absolute minimum prevalence. It is actually quite possible that the Amish have a much higher prevalence of low functioning autism (mostly syndromic) than the general population. I say that because of the following.

The Amish are 12 percent of the local population, but their children represent close to half of the area’s most severe cases of mental and physical retardation.

(source)

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