There's certainly some truth to the illustration. Worse still for those older people in Black communities, for example, whose chances of being identified and supported are ....nonexistent. The whole model of autism is built on Westernised white boys with current high levels of distress/overwhelm.

True. I would love to see realistic prevalence numbers across all regions of the world, age groups, gender, etc. Mostly because I believe it should be more or less equal across the board. Does any data like that exist?

Nope. More is being done, but we are nowhere near knowing the facts for most of the world. Nearly everything we have is from Westernised, mostly white, communities. Quite a few countries of all kinds are still very much in the 1940s-1980s with their thinking about autism, imagining it is 'rare'

Quite agree! I still think this 'explosion of autism' is very much to do with more of us older people getting (very) late diagnosis, once we are all counted, it will flatten. Oh, better early diagnosis does affect it too.