Childhood diagnoses in individuals identified as autistics in adulthood.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Autism is a developmental condition, where symptoms are expected to occur in childhood, but a significant number of individuals are diagnosed with autism for the first time in adulthood. Here, we examine diagnoses given in childhood among individuals that are diagnosed with autism in adulthood, to investigate whether the late autism diagnosis might be explained by misdiagnosis in childhood or diagnostic overshadowing.

Methods

Through the Danish National Patient Registry, we identified individuals diagnosed with autism in adulthood (N = 2199), as well as a control sample with no records of an autism diagnosis (N = 460,798) and calculated how many had received different psychiatric or neurological diagnoses in childhood.

Results

We found that most childhood d

SUBMITTER: Rodgaard EM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8670291 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature