Dame Uta Frith warns autism label is losing clinical meaning as diagnoses surge

Dame Uta Frith, an 85‑year‑old pioneer of autism research, told The Guardian that the word “autistic” is losing its precise clinical meaning as the number of people receiving the label has exploded in recent decades.

Why has Frith changed her stance on the autism spectrum?

She now believes the spectrum has become “more and more accommodating” to the point of “collapse”, a view she first voiced in a March interview with TES and later expanded in an August article in Psychological Medicine where she warned the term risked becoming a “vague, culturally amplified identity category”.

How steep has the rise in autism diagnoses been?

In the UK, official figures show a 787% increase between 1998 and 2018, with the biggest jump among adults and a larger rise for women than men, according to The Guardian. Comparable American data indicate a 175% rise from 2011 to 2022, driven largely by 26‑ to 34‑year‑olds, while childhood rates have also surged.

What did the recent government review say about overdiagnosis?

A review commissioned by Health Secretary Wes Streeting and published a few weeks ago concluded that broader awareness and expanded diagnostic concepts explain much of the increase, but it could not confirm overdiagnosis at scale. It did, however, recommend tighter monitoring of privately run autism and ADHD clinics, warning that “if present trends continue we are clearly entering a phase … towards an increased risk of misdiagnosis and overdiagnosis.”