This is a question that comes up a lot: is the general health of autistic children lower than, say, typically developing children or children with other developmental delays?
Actually, few people make the comparison to other developmental delays, but it is worth doing.
The National Survey of Children’s Health gives us some information to address this question. It is not a perfect set of data to study, but it will give us an idea.
Parents were asked to grade their child’s health with the question “In general, how would you describe [S.C.]’s health? Would you say [his/her] health is excellent, very good, good, fair, or poor?”
The overall population showed the following distribution:
Excellent: 64.9%
very good: 22.9%
good: 9.8%
fair: 2.0%
poor: 0.3%
So, in general, American kids are pretty healthy.
How about autistic kids*? Here’s the distribution:
Excellent: 34.3%
very good: 29.5%
good: 23.0%
fair: 8.8%
poor: 4.3%
That is a big difference from the general population. From 65% “excellent” down to 34% for autistic kids. We don’t know how parents considered “autism” as being in “poor health”, though. In other words, parents could consider their child to not be in “excellent health” just because he/she is autistic. I throw that out for consideration, not as an explanation of these numbers. We just don’t know if this is a factor.
A clearer indication that autistic may have more medical health problems (at least to my eye) is the fact that “poor” is 4.3% for autistic kids, vs. 0.3% for their typical peers. I could be wrong, but I don’t see many parents listing their child’s health as “poor” just because the kids are autistic. I could see parents downgrading from “excellent” to “very good”, for example.
Compare the autistic group to children “who currently have developmental delay problems”. Note that this group includes many of the autistic kids. Here is the distribution for the kids with developmental delays:
Excellent: 30.1%
very good: 29.5%
good: 25.6%
fair: 10.9%
poor: 3.8%
To my eye, autistic kids and developmentally delayed kids are the same in terms of health grades.
In other words: yes, the general health of autistic kids looks like it is worse than the general population. However, the general health of autistic kids looks like it is basically the same as that for all kids with developmental delays.
To answer the obvious complaints:
1) I am not saying that autistic kids do not have health problems. Being autistic does not make one immune to serious health problems. If anything, autistic kids do have lower health grades than typical kids. However, autistic kids do not have lower health grades than developmentally delayed kids.
2) One (probably me) should look at health grades of autistic children who are rated as being more “severe” and see if the general health grades are lower for that subgroup.
3) This is not definitive data, but a response to a survey. However, within the limitations of a survey, I think these data are interesting to consider.
*Autistic kids being children whose parents told the survey team that the child currently has autism or an ASD.
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This is a question that comes up a lot: is the general health of autistic children lower than, say, typically developing children or children with other developmental delays?
Actually, few people make the comparison to other developmental delays, but it is worth doing.
The National Survey of Children’s Health gives us some information to address this question. It is not a perfect set of data to study, but it will give us an idea.
Parents were asked to grade their child’s health with the question “In general, how would you describe [S.C.]’s health? Would you say [his/her] health is excellent, very good, good, fair, or poor?”
The overall population showed the following distribution:
Excellent: 64.9%
very good: 22.9%
good: 9.8%
fair: 2.0%
poor: 0.3%
So, in general, American kids are pretty healthy.
How about autistic kids*? Here’s the distribution:
Excellent: 34.3%
very good: 29.5%
good: 23.0%
fair: 8.8%
poor: 4.3%
That is a big difference from the general population. From 65% “excellent” down to 34% for autistic kids. We don’t know how parents considered “autism” as being in “poor health”, though. In other words, parents could consider their child to not be in “excellent health” just because he/she is autistic. I throw that out for consideration, not as an explanation of these numbers. We just don’t know if this is a factor.
A clearer indication that autistic may have more medical health problems (at least to my eye) is the fact that “poor” is 4.3% for autistic kids, vs. 0.3% for their typical peers. I could be wrong, but I don’t see many parents listing their child’s health as “poor” just because the kids are autistic. I could see parents downgrading from “excellent” to “very good”, for example.
Compare the autistic group to children “who currently have developmental delay problems”. Note that this group includes many of the autistic kids. Here is the distribution for the kids with developmental delays:
Excellent: 30.1%
very good: 29.5%
good: 25.6%
fair: 10.9%
poor: 3.8%
To my eye, autistic kids and developmentally delayed kids are the same in terms of health grades.
In other words: yes, the general health of autistic kids looks like it is worse than the general population. However, the general health of autistic kids looks like it is basically the same as that for all kids with developmental delays.
To answer the obvious complaints:
1) I am not saying that autistic kids do not have health problems. Being autistic does not make one immune to serious health problems. If anything, autistic kids do have lower health grades than typical kids. However, autistic kids do not have lower health grades than developmentally delayed kids.
2) One (probably me) should look at health grades of autistic children who are rated as being more “severe” and see if the general health grades are lower for that subgroup.
3) This is not definitive data, but a response to a survey. However, within the limitations of a survey, I think these data are interesting to consider.
*Autistic kids being children whose parents told the survey team that the child currently has autism or an ASD.