HJAR Mar/Apr 2025

AUTISM CARE 8 MAR / APR 2025 I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF ARKANSAS The authors of this special series are grateful for the opportunity to provide information about autism spectrum dis- order (ASD). These articles are intended to provide information to primary care provid- ers, medical administration, and legislators in our state to better understand autism and the roadblocks to providing excellent care to individuals with this diagnosis. Another goal of this series is to provide information to help our state “dream big” to create bet- ter resources for autistic individuals, their families, and the professionals who treat them. We have asked some of the best and brightest minds in our state to provide this information. For those of us who work in autism, a ACROSS THE SPECTRUM: A Special Report on Pediatric Autism Care in Arkansas frequent question we get asked is, “Why are there so many more cases of autism now?” The answer is multilayered. One layer is that the diagnosis and treatment of autism is a young and emerging field. Before 1980, we did not have a diagnostic category of autism. In 1943, Leo Kanner at Johns Hopkins Uni- versity School of Medicine was the first per- son to describe 11 children who had lack of social engagement and other symptoms, and he coined the term “infantile autism”. 1 One year later, in 1944, Hans Asperger at the University of Vienna in Austria, also wrote an article describing a group of chil- dren who presented with many of the same features as Kanner’s group. 2 Kanner’s and Asperger’s terms were not in the diagnostic nomenclature at that time, so individuals with this developmental presentation were given the diagnoses of childhood schizo- phrenia, childhood psychosis, and/or bor- derline pathology of childhood. 3 The term “pervasive developmental dis- order”was introduced in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-III) in 1987. 4 This addition provided the framework for more accurate conceptualization of the difficulty with social engagement and included classi- fications such as autistic disorder, Asperger disorder, and pervasive developmental dis- order, not otherwise specified (PDD, NOS). This monumental step drove the beginning of research and clinical interventions in this field. In 2013, the DSM-5 was published and Understanding Autism & Access to Services Why Are There More Cases of Autism? A Historical and Practical Perspective By Jayne Bellando, PhD, and Jaimie Flor, MD