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Also I think you should add to "diagnosis increasing" the fact that what is classed as autism is changing. 10 years ago autism was just one condition you had to varying degrees. Now it's a spectrum of about 20 different personality traits with autism at one end and Aspergers at the other, with normality in the middle. So all the people who where diagnosed as having one disorder before now fall under the autistic diagnosis. Literally everyone will score as partially autistic on at least 1 of the traits. As such, there are many people out there classed as having "high functioning autism". They can go about their lives like normal people but still get the autism diagnosis.