what year was autism first diagnosed

Autism was first officially described as a distinct condition by Austrian- American psychiatrist Leo Kanner in 1943. He published a paper about children with a unique set of behaviors, which he termed "early infantile autism," marking the initial diagnosis of autism as a separate disorder from other psychiatric conditions like schizophrenia. However, the term "autism" itself was first used earlier in 1911 by Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler to describe a symptom associated with schizophrenia, not as a distinct condition. The formal recognition of autism as a developmental disorder evolved over the following decades, and autism became an official diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) starting in 1980.