Skip to main content

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Intellectual Disabilities
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1359505
This article is part of the Research Topic Insights In Intellectual Disabilities: 2023 View all 3 articles

Intellectual Disability and Autism Prevalence in Western Australia: Impact of the NDIS

Provisionally accepted
Jenny Bourke Jenny Bourke 1*Timothy Smith Timothy Smith 2Richard Sanders Richard Sanders 3Jocelyn Jones Jocelyn Jones 1Maathumai Ranjan Maathumai Ranjan 4Kingsley Wong Kingsley Wong 1Helen M. Leonard Helen M. Leonard 1
  • 1 Telethon Kids Institute, University of Western Australia, Nedlands, Australia
  • 2 Western Australian Department of Communities, Perth, Australia
  • 3 Sanders Consulting, Perth, Australia
  • 4 Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Estimates of the prevalence of intellectual disability or autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may vary depending on the methodology, geographical location, and sources of ascertainment. The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) in Australia was introduced to provide individualized funding for eligible people with a significant and permanent disability. Its recent inclusion as a source of ascertainment in the population-based Intellectual Disability Exploring Answers (IDEA) database in Western Australia has allowed comparisons of the prevalence of intellectual disability and ASD before and after its introduction. Prevalence of intellectual disability in 2020 was 22.5 per 1,000 (/1,000) live births compared with previous estimates in 2010 of 17/1,000, and for ASD, the estimate was 20.7/1,000 in 2020 compared with 5.1/1,000 in 2010. Whilst the prevalence of ASD in Aboriginal individuals was about two-thirds that of non-Aboriginals, there was an increased prevalence of ASD in Aboriginal children under 10 years compared with non-Aboriginal children. The concurrent relaxation of ASD diagnostic practice standards in Western Australia associated with the administration of access to the NDIS and the release of the National Guidelines empowering single diagnosticians to determine the appropriateness of engaging additional diagnosticians to form a multidisciplinary team on ASD diagnosis, appear to be important factors associated with the increase in ASD diagnoses both with and without intellectual disability.

    Keywords: Intellectual Disability, autism, developmental disorder, Prevalence, Trends

    Received: 21 Dec 2023; Accepted: 05 Apr 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Bourke, Smith, Sanders, Jones, Ranjan, Wong and Leonard. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Jenny Bourke, Telethon Kids Institute, University of Western Australia, Nedlands, Australia

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.