New ASD: Autism Minus Intellectual Disorder

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It looks like they are going to add another ASD to the DSM V, possibly to replace PDD-NOS (from my understanding; it was a pretty wordy article for me). It's pretty interesting. Here's the link:

New ASD: Autism Minus Intellectual Disability

Most of it very poorly written, but it's basically a 'curebie' rant, claiming that the new DSM is going to classify only Aspergians and HFAs (who show little to no intellectual impairment) as Autistic, and ignoring LFAs as if they don't exist, which of course, would be impossible to do. Even if their condition were given a different diagnosis, with a new name, they would still be classified as impaired and in need of assistance. Of course, then a 'cure' could be sought without attracting such criticism among the rest of the Autistic community, which one would think would make this author quite happy - but then, it's a rant, not a well thought out argument.

The truth is much more likely to be exactly the opposite - that the DSM 5 will throw Autism across such a broad 'spectrum' that those of us more highly functioning and with less intellectual impairment will be classified as such mild cases as to make it harder for us to qualify for assistance. Which only exacerbates the problem we already have, that our handicap being invisible to the untrained eye, our difficulties are thought of as nonexistent, or at least unimportant.

It does seem to come to a flawed conclusion though - someone can have an intellectual disability in isolation without autism, so in the cases described they would just say that they have autism and an intellectual disability.

It is just goes to show that Psychiatry is total pseudo science and the APA are a bunch of halfwits. What it is really an indication of is that the arbitrary diagnostic requirements in the DSM V cannot be used to model conditions at all. Remember their "rules" on coincidence and mutual exclusivity are completely arbitrary and not based on any reality, just a lack of methodology and empirical basis.

What does the APA have against Asperger's? It's like if they are on a vendetta to make Asperger's not a disorder but a lifestyle choice?

How about I write an article for an autism scholarly journal and coin a disorder after myself? Or is "Ivanoff's syndrome" too offensive as well to the folks at the APA? To be quick, one diagnosis does not fit all.

They don't have anything against it, if anything they prolonged it existence as a label. It is just arbitrary, it took them over ten years to figure out what we already knew.

Know some people are hung up on this but Asperger's is an arbitrary distinction within ASD especially within higher functioning ASD. Asperger himself never came up with something called Asperger's, he talked of Autistic psychopathy, so even he had a hunch it had something to do with autism. His observations, whist historically significant, were like finding the trunk of the elephant in the dark, as you might describe it as something different than someone else feeling the backend. Asperger, was a paediatrician not a psychiatrist.

However the APA and European counterparts continue to use the non methodology that is Psychiatry, so expect more of this nonsense. It is quite clear due to this debacle that they haven't got a clue what it is they are supposed to be there for, yet they are the gatekeepers and authorities of nearly all mental health programs despite not really fully understanding all of the discipline they are supervising let alone what “empirical” means.

What should be expected from an MD is to not miss any underlying medical conditions. When a mental state is branded a disease health is at risk. The impact of their drugs on health and development receives inadequate attention. In the US referrals to these people are apt to come from psychologists while bypassing primary care providers, at least from what I've observed.