At Pajamas Media Dalrymple discusses the difficulties and uncertainties around the increased rate of autism diagnoses, and addresses the difficulty for those who are “dis-diagnosed”:

Diseases that have no objective tests to distinguish them from normality have a tendency to spread like fungus: for example, it is years since I heard anyone say that he was unhappy rather than depressed, and it cannot be a coincidence that 10 percent of the populations of most western countries are now taking antidepressants. Yet the state of melancholia undoubtedly exists, as anyone who has seen a case will attest.