A Vanishing Diagnosis for Aspergers Syndrome - NYTimes.co

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Taking Asperger’s out of the Criteria manual!
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/healt ... erger.html

Temple Grandin said they could keep Asperger's but throw PDD-NOS "in the garbage can" Then where the hell would all of my problems come from then? The garbage can?

The problem though is that they may have a good point. Were Leo and Hans studying 2 different distinct disorders or were they studying the same disorder but from different angles. Yes, AS has entered the lexicon but apparently all have not heard. If you read the article, you would have seen that the label of autism is what gets the services in many area. I am wondering if just maybe, things would be better for us if there was one set of words to describe us rather than 4 or 5 different disorders. Especially since the line between most of the disorders is rather blurry (and in one case, a catch all when the doctor is not sure what label to give you).

I am not too upset by this, just another in a long line of labels, autism spectrum disorder
makes more sense to me since it seems no two person I have meet with aspergers is exactly
the same. When I was diagnosed in 1997 nobody knew what aspergers was, and there wasn't
any real info online till WP started, most of the people I talked to thought aspergers was a
made up syndrome

It will be interesting to see the conclusion to this.

This is good news for anyone who's job prospects are hurt by Aspergers... with a bona-fide diagnosis of autism, one can get cheap housing and cash payments via the gubmint...

The Autist that used to be known as Asperger's.

Does it mean we would have to be re-diagonosed?

Does it mean we would have to be re-diagnosed?

As usual, follow the money.

While having several names does make the study of the field harder, learning about a half dozen related conditions, one ASD Class creates millions of conditions which take a professional to sort out. So more office hours.

I find Asperger's alone to be too broad. To some it is a gift, to others a curse, and fitting both in the same group leads to confusion.

One ASD with some standard sorting would work better.

First it elimanates conditions not covered. Currently the field is a mess of covered, treatable, untreatable, and so some get over Dxed, so they can get services, yet in dealing with it, they are dealing with a condition they do not have. This also leads to medicating people who do not need it.

While the names are confusing, and often group things that do not group, a 1 to 10 scale would work.

The easiest to figure out are LFA, they need services. As the condition is not a single point, some higher functioning people do have the same problems, but only in one area. Scanning the whole person makes sense.

Someone can appear high functioning, yet stim like mad, have gut problems, and a Dx of Asperger's does not deal with that. So targeted treatment across the board for actual problem areas would work.

Also on follow the money, making available dollars go farther in delivering only the treatment needed.

While I often bash the psychobabble religion, just in autism they get problems thrown at them, such as gastrointestinal, Neurological, that they were never trained for.

The gastrointestinal folks know nothing of autism. Time for some cross training.

The rising concept that everyone is nuts fits the facts. It is just a matter of degree. As Jung said, "Show me a sane man, and I will cure him."

Mental Health, it is not just for whack jobs and ret*ds anymore, it is a problem across the whole of humanity.

Asperger's brings up that point. High functioning people in technology, they make great money, they would not want anything on their record, but they do need treatment, if they are ever going to get a date.

How wide is the ASD Spectrum? I would say 10% of the population. Maybe 1/10 of those need clinical and social services protection, but the rest could use some help.

Tony Attwood has a point that people will accept Asperger's, but not autism. He should also notice that his books are read by more people than we think there are Asperger's. His stuff is a crossover hit with the non clinical.

I have been calling these people Half-Aspies. This halo is large, and functions well, but the problems still exist. IT workers who live on Malox, are on their third marrage, or never had a date, the problems are real.

Mental Health used to be easy. Electro shock, ice water baths, near lethal doses of Thorizine, problem solved. Then the Supreme Court ruled that they could not lock up people for life who had done nothing. Later Dick Cheney refused to let their methods be used at Gitmo. Then there was that United Nations thing, something about Human Rights.

Mental Health work does have an image problem.

With High Functioning Autism, they are now dealing with people who are a lot smarter than they are, have more and higher degrees, and do question the validity of the whole field.

More than the DSM is in need of reform.

Wait... What would that make Asperger's? Just high-functioning?

I like the label Asperger's due to the lack of the word "functioning".

You see, I find the terms low/high-functioning to be rather insulting.
Every part of my brain works. Some parts are not as developed as the average, while others are more developed. However, every part functions. That makes me fully-functioning.


Now, merging Asperger's in as just a "spectrum" diagnosis would be an oversimplification.
I've met other aspies and I've met people with HFA. While there's significant amount of individual variation, I found HFA to be different.

Due to the broad variation, a diagnosis of "autism" could be extremely misleading.
"Are you the kind that talks?" >> "No, I'm the kind that travels to parallel worlds and transforms into a bunny."


...What? A question like that deserves a flippant response.

Very interesting. Thank you for posting the article!

Asperger's was already an arbitrary diagnosis, in the light of "higher functioning" ASD

This is old news they have been talking about this for years, personally they don't go far enough. It is psychiatric methodology which needs to be reformed. Because the checklist are arbitrary, and don’t reflect the spectral nature of thing despite acknowledging them.

I usually refer to myself as ASD not Asperger's.

People always get the history wrong with regard to Asperger. He never came up with a condition called Asperger's Syndrome. In fact he wasn't claiming a condition at all, he was making observations on what he called autistic psychopathy (that doesn’t mean he though we were psychopaths, that was typical language at the time).

Also people think he was a psychiatrist, when he was a paediatrician. In other word he was more predisposed to make these observations, without a BS ideology clouding his judgment.

Of course his observations aren't perfect, but pretty groundbreaking for the age.