Yes, There Is Autism Among The Amish. But How Much?

Do we find autism among the Amish? This topic has, predictably, been all over the news this week.

That’s because of comments made by President Trump at a press conference on Tuesday. The most relevant bit of the conference was this segment (emphasis added):

Donald Trump 00:03:07-00:03:36 (30 sec)

“And the first day, all of these great doctors behind me were there, I told them this is what — we have to find out. Because when you go from 20,000 to 10,000 and then you go to 12, you know there’s something artificial. They’re taking something.

And by the way, I think I can say that there are certain groups of people that don’t take vaccines and don’t take any pills, that have no autism, that have no autism.“

Donald Trump 00:03:36-00:03:42 (6 sec)

“Does that tell you something? That’s currently — is that a correct statement, by the way?”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 00:03:42-00:03:48 (6 sec)

“There are some studies that suggest that, yeah, but the Amish, for example.“

Donald Trump 00:03:48-00:04:33 (45 sec)

“The Amish. Yeah, virtually — I heard none. See, Bobby wants to be very careful with what he says and he should, but I’m not so careful with what I say, but you have certain groups, the Amish as an example. They have essentially no autism.“

You can find the full transcript of the press conference here.

The President is far from the first one to believe or claim this, as it’s been seen online for a long time now.

I addressed it earlier this year in a post and video on five Amish health claims that go too far. In a nutshell, there have been studies published in medical journals on Amish people with autism.

Steven Nolt also provides reason to believe that autism does exist among the Amish in an article in Lancaster Online:

“We know that that statement is untrue simply because … Amish parents will write about their children with autism (in Amish publications). They use that word,” said Steven M. Nolt, interim director at the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies and professor of history and Anabaptist studies at Elizabethtown College.

Claim: “Essentially” No Autism

So the impression left by the conference was that President Trump said “the Amish have no autism”, and that’s what’s been widely reported. And, I can understand why when taking the remarks in their entirety.

However, there’s also an important bit to point out. You can see in the transcript above (at least in the second part of it) that the President inserted a wiggle-word, so to speak: “essentially”.

Again, he says “…you have certain groups, the Amish as an example. They have essentially no autism.”

“Essentially” does not mean “precisely” or “exactly” or “absolutely” zero cases of autism. “Essentially” could mean that there are some cases, but that there is “nearly zero”.

There is an important point here, which I think is part of the reason why this claim has flourished. While there have been documented cases of individuals with autism, there hasn’t been much if any comparable wider study of its prevalence.

On that, another expert in the Lancaster Online report had this to say:

There “has been very little systematic data collected about autism in the Amish community,” says Braxton Mitchell, who has worked with the Amish as co-director of the Amish Research Clinic in Lancaster County. The clinic is associated with the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

But like Nolt, Mitchell said autism does exist in the Amish community — his group has asked Amish people this question.

There has been at least one study which touched on prevalence of autism among a larger group of Amish. However, it’s not really appropriate for comparison purposes; Mitchell explains why here:

A preliminary evaluation in 2010 sent clinicians door-to-door in counties in Ohio and Indiana, where they screened 1,899 Amish children using a standardized questionnaire and other diagnostic tools (archived here).

The researchers reported the presence of autism “at a rate of approximately 1 in 271 children,” but they wrote that further studies would need to address “the cultural norms and customs that may be playing a role in the reporting style of caregivers.”

Mitchell, whose team has been working with the Amish for over 30 years, told AFP it is difficult to compare the paper’s findings to non-Amish populations, because a direct comparison would require replicating the same methods.

“Bottom line: yes, autism does exist in the Amish,” Mitchell said. “We do not know how its frequency compares to non-Amish.”

So essentially, we know there are cases of autism among the Amish, both anecdotally, and based on published research on individuals with autism.

But comparing the Amish to the non-Amish public is difficult to impossible without more comprehensive, appropriate studies, which are currently lacking.

And I think this is a key point – because there hasn’t been more conclusive systematic research on the Amish, that leaves more room for claims like “the Amish have no autism” – and other claims that can be attached to that.

The Amish Are Ripe For Bold Health Claims

This leads to a bigger point about the Amish as a group being essentially an open canvas for bold health claims.

People are simply more apt to make and believe such claims about a group like the Amish. And in my view, there are several reasons for this (these may not be the only reasons):

First, generally speaking the Amish live differently than most of us, outside of modernity to varying degrees.

And so it would make sense that they do things differently, and simply because of that, that they could have different health outcomes than the rest of us.

Second – and related to the above – they have an air of mystery to them – in part due to their distance, both literal and metaphorical, from most Americans.

Though many non-Amish do have relationships with the Amish, the majority of Americans simply don’t personally know any Amish people.

There just aren’t enough of them to go around for that to be the case. And for that matter, they live in geographically limited, rural communities outside of major population zones.

Additionally, some groups keep rather limited contact with outsiders (although in others, they are quite integrated with local communities).

But whenever there is a distinct population of people who are isolated from, or not so well-known to the majority for whatever reason, this leaves a space where incorrect or exaggerated ideas can more easily take hold.

Third, the Amish also have the reputation of being “all-natural” – to use that term as a sort of shorthand – growing their own food, making their own clothes, using home remedies, farming organically, baking their own bread, etc.

This image of the Amish goes back generations and is pretty deeply ingrained in the American perception of them.

How true or untrue that perception is for the Amish in 2025 is a separate question – given that, for example, even the most traditional Amish groups buy and consume store-bought food, some of it quite unhealthy.

The point is, I believe many Americans do associate “the Amish” with the concept of “all-natural”. And if that’s your view of the Amish, it would simply fit that they don’t use “artificial” things like common modern medicines or vaccines…which brings us to the next point.

And that is the still pretty widespread, in my view, belief that the Amish do not vaccinate.

I can understand why this view has staying power, given high-profile news stories like the recent one about Amish schools in New York being fined for rejecting state vaccine requirements, or reporting on the low vaccination rate among Amish during the COVID pandemic.

While generally speaking, vaccination rates across the many Amish groups are lower than among non-Amish, it’s not true that they reject all vaccination.

It will vary a good bit between communities, with the more traditional groups like the Swartzentruber Amish generally the least likely to undergo vaccination.

But there have been numerous public examples of the Amish being immunized, especially in the face of public health outbreaks like measles or whooping cough or Hepatitis A.

So in a nutshell, we have the common perception that the Amish are an outlier group who live, eat, and medicate differently than the rest of us, and they also have an air of “all natural” to them.

And most people don’t know Amish people personally, to develop a firsthand understanding or verify how differently or similarly to the rest of us they actually do live.

We’ve also heard they don’t vaccinate. So sure, taking all that into account, it seems reasonable and believable when someone claims that the Amish simply don’t suffer from this or that ailment that has been increasingly diagnosed in, and associated with, “modern times”.

Broader Study is Overdue

So in conclusion, it might not be a bad idea for someone or someones to do a more comprehensive study of the prevalence of autism among the Amish, with data which could be compared to the non-Amish population.

Frankly, given the longevity of this claim, I’m a bit surprised this sort of study is lacking. Though I won’t be surprised if we see one soon, given the attention that this topic got this week.

It seems it would be very difficult to cover the Amish as a whole, given the many different and widespread groups, but you could study one or more of the larger communities at least.

And if and when that study is done, it may turn out that there is in fact less autism among the Amish study group – or about the same – or even, perhaps, more.

But if it is discovered that there are significant differences, we’d need further actual study done to attempt to determine what causes that.

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