A close relative of mine works for a non-profit in Canada to give families with special-needs children access to resources from the government and other organiz

A close relative of mine works for a non-profit in Canada to give families with special-needs children access to resources from the government and other organizations. She pushes for autism diagnoses constantly, well aware that they are often not applicable, because it's basically the only childhood mental disability that gets significant money and attention. If she didn't, she'd have to kick desperate families with severely disabled children out the door with nothing. I'm skeptical of the medical opinions in blogs like this where parents have to do their own research because the system is ignoring their actual reality, and the use of autism as a bureaucratic catch-all has obvious negative consequences, but given the broken and twisted medical and social services systems in most Western countries, I don't see how anything can change. It's all a symptom of a much broader failure.