For the ‘millionth’ time a parent said to me today: “Everyone seems to have autism these days”. It wasn’t the first time, and it certainly won’t be the last.

I understood their concern. When you hear about diagnosis rates increasing dramatically – one study points to a 787% increase in autism diagnoses between 1998 and 2018 – it’s natural to wonder if we’ve swung too far in the other direction.

But this perspective reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of what we’re actually witnessing.

We’re not seeing an epidemic of neurodivergence. We’re witnessing the correction of decades of systematic oversight.

For generations, our diagnostic criteria were built around a narrow template that captured only the most obvious presentations, typically in boys.

We systematically missed girls who internalised and masked their differences, adults who developed sophisticated coping mechanisms, and anyone whose symptoms didn’t match the textbook examples from the 1980s.

My friend Sarah was diagnosed with autism aged 37 after her daughter’s autism assessment. She’d spent decades thinking she was “sensitive”, “didn’t like big........

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