Overwhelmed by autism: a dramatic increase in diagnoses has lawmakers debating the state's role.

• Author: Saunders, Jennifer B.

Learning your child has been diagnosed with autism is difficult for any parent. But for many, diagnosis is only the beginning of coping with a frustrating patchwork system to find information, resources and services for their child.

States often lack a coordinated system or a centralized agency to provide autism services, leaving a complicated maze of services for parents to navigate. In addition, the cost of caring for a child with autism can be crippling.

For state policymakers, the growing number of children with autism and their wide-ranging health, social services and special education needs pose a challenge. Although many states have provided care for and education to autistic children, some lawmakers worry that overstressed state budgets can't currently afford such assistance.

Autism--a neurodevelopmental disorder that leads to behavioral challenges and problems with social interaction and communication--was first described in the 1940s, but diagnostic criteria were not developed until the 1980s. Since then, the number of diagnosed children has risen drastically.

Autism now is more common than juvenile diabetes and childhood cancer. More than 250,000 children ages 6 to 21 with autism received public special education services in 2007, compared to roughly 54,000 children in 1998.

Last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released data from 2006 estimating that one in 110 children in the United States have autism, or about 730,000 children, up from one in 150 in 2002.

The number of people served by California's Department of Developmental Services, for example, increased twelvefold between 1987 and 2007. Texas experienced a fourfold spike in diagnoses of autism over the past decade.

This dramatic rise has caused researchers at the Centers for Disease Control to elevate autism to an urgent public health concern, and parents and others to wonder what's causing this growth. It's not clear how much is a result of heightened awareness and better diagnoses and how much is a true increase in prevalence.

THE COST OF A LIFETIME

A Harvard School of Public Health study estimates it costs $3.2 million to care for an autistic person over a lifetime. Families may spend more than $67,000 a year to cover direct medical and nonmedical expenses, not counting the emotional toll of such a condition.

"Hearing from families who are literally going broke because their insurance companies won't cover autism treatments" is what compelled New...