My article in Psychology Today on ADHD and Autism hit a nerve. Behavioral disorders — ASD, ADHD, and all other psychiatric disorders — are generally not caused by a single biological abnormality or genetic mutation. Instead, each of these disorders can be caused by literally hundreds of genetic or biological variants, most often in combination, and they have other contributors too. Behavioral disorders may be caused by prenatal infection or other prenatal trauma, postnatal infection or other medical conditions, malnutrition, physical and emotional trauma, stress or other environmental issues both in the past and present — and of course, interactions between all these factors put together. Read it here.
