From Mary Kirchoff, CEO of Wonderland Child & Family Services (via PR Newswire):

Right here in Washington State, over 165,000 children are estimated to be living with the effects of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD) or Prenatal Substance Exposure (PSE). PSE refers to the exposure of a developing fetus to alcohol or other substances during pregnancy, a reality that cuts across all socioeconomic lines, affecting families in every corner of our communities.  PSE is statistically four times more prevalent than and often misdiagnosed as autism.

I indirectly referenced the dramatic proliferation of autism diagnoses in an essay on “diagnosing” fictional characters. While the focus of that essay was fiction, I am of the view that it is worth exploring whether all of these diagnoses (especially many of the adult diagnoses) are appropriate and remembering that cases of high functioning autism, popular in media, are not representative of autism as a whole, but rather a subset (largely associated with what was formerly known as Asperger’s Syndrome, although every Asperger’s case is high achieving much less high functioning). I had not previously done reading on PSE being “misdiagnosed as autism,” but this sounds like an interesting topic for further reading.