…I spoke with five researchers and clinicians who say they’re concerned about the possibility that too many people are being diagnosed with mild autism. “Some of those people absolutely have autism,” Catherine Lord, a clinical psychologist at UCLA who specializes in autism, told me. …Some of the experts I spoke with also told me that more people seem to be seeking out an autism diagnosis now than they did in the past. Unlike, say, those for schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, an autism diagnosis has become desirable to some people, Uta Frith, an emeritus psychology professor at University College London who was one of the first people to study mild autism, told me. Lord said that she, too, has seen more patients asking whether they should be diagnosed with autism, and many of them have relatively mild symptoms.