In defence of autism spectrum idea

Uta Frith is a renowned autism researcher who originally helped popularise the idea of autism as a spectrum, to reflect the wide range of ways autistic traits manifest across people. In a recent interview, she argues that the spectrum has “widened to the point of collapse”, claiming that people currently diagnosed as autistic no longer share a meaningful common factor.

One of her central concerns is that the rise in diagnoses, especially among people without obvious early developmental differences, is straining limited services and preventing those with more visible support needs from receiving adequate help. Framed this way, the problem appears to be “too many” autistic people and “too little” support. But this logic quickly leads to excluding those whose needs are less visible or more intermittent from formal recognition and services. It shifts the burden onto them to find help elsewhere or to “cope” without accommodations, rather than questioning why systems are built on scarcity in the first place.