An article from NYTimes

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mikassyna
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09 Mar 2013, 9:47 pm

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/01/opini ... html?_r=2&

Did anyone post this and read this? Opinions on it?

Fnord
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09 Mar 2013, 10:02 pm

Imo, this is the most revealing part;

Quote:

If I had been born five years later and given the diagnosis at the more impressionable age of 12, what would have happened? I might never have tried to write about social interaction, having been told that I was hard-wired to find social interaction baffling.

I have to wonder how many people have been convinced that they have A.S. for simply being shy, awkward, and interested in things that no one else is ... I wonder how many of these people behave as definitive Aspies only because everyone around treats them as if they were definitive Aspies, even though they've grown out of A.S., or they're not actually Aspies at all?

For example, I knew a kid in school who was diagnosed with a congenital heart defect when he was 3, and for the next 15 years, he lived the life of a virtual recluse simply because his parents believed that if he exerted himself by playing normal kid games, he would die. His father finally got a job that gave him decent medical insurance, so the parents took the kid to a heart specialist who told them that the kid was normal - no evidence of any heart defect at all.

He tried out for the track team in his senior year and earned his varsity letter.

Either he grew out of his heart condition, or he never had it in the first place; but for many years afterwards, his relatives still treated him as if he would drop dead from a heart attack at any moment.

eric76
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10 Mar 2013, 4:10 am

Fnord wrote:

For example, I knew a kid in school who was diagnosed with a congenital heart defect when he was 3, and for the next 15 years, he lived the life of a virtual recluse simply because his parents believed that if he exerted himself by playing normal kid games, he would die. His father finally got a job that gave him decent medical insurance, so the parents took the kid to a heart specialist who told them that the kid was normal - no evidence of any heart defect at all.

He tried out for the track team in his senior year and earned his varsity letter.

Either he grew out of his heart condition, or he never had it in the first place; but for many years afterwards, his relatives still treated him as if he would drop dead from a heart attack at any moment.

I have heard that it is quite common for very small children to have a hole in heir hearts but in most cases, it closes up on its own. If it doesn't close on its own, they need surgery to close it, not wait to die.

Ichinin
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10 Mar 2013, 5:23 am

Fnord wrote:

Imo, this is the most revealing part;

Quote:

That.

The "cure" is to live life, learn and pick up things about social interaction, not to sit in a bubble and be afraid of the world. There will be many mistakes made, and tears, but eventually the person will be a somewhat functioning individual that can contribute to society and live an independent life. If a person has a diagnosis and the coworkers knows about it, there will probably less tears though...

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ruveyn
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10 Mar 2013, 11:30 am

The problem with Asperger's is that it is -defined- symptomatically. There are few if any objective organic/biological markers for the condition. Until there are real hard objective indications for any kind of autism there will always be a question mark about the condition. Is it biological/organic/'neurological or is it a set a neurotic symptoms playing themselves out?

AgentPalpatine
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10 Mar 2013, 11:53 am

The article is a year old.....and I did'nt see it at the time.

That said, I have some problems with the article, and from a different prespective than those made by the above posters.

The writer puts stock in the fact that "I ditched the Forsterian narrator thing, and then I wasn’t that awkward or isolated anymore."* (Quote from the linked NYT article). The problem here is that Aspies, just like almost everyone else, can change speech patterns, just like if one moved to Southern CA.

The article argues for the same "impairment" test that DSM-5 puts so much faith in. While I realize that many posters on this board feel differently than I do, I do not believe AS critera should rely on socially-imposed (or not imposed) standards of "impairment", but should rely on indentifable differences in neurological processing and inter-personal communication and interaction styles.

* Fair use to discuss the article

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uwmonkdm
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10 Mar 2013, 1:38 pm

This guy is an idiot, like most 'journalists'.

meems
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10 Mar 2013, 1:54 pm

It seems like a better title would be "I was misdiagnosed as having AS and briefly lived under the impression that I had AS as a result of this"

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visagrunt
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11 Mar 2013, 1:09 pm

uwmonkdm wrote:

This guy is an idiot, like most 'journalists'.

That seems to me to be a woefully uncritical statement.

He was, after all, diagnosed, by professionals who knew (or ought to have known) what they were doing. He was entitled to rely on their opinions.

And while we have no reason to doubt that he met the diagnostic criteria at 17, we also have no reason to disbelieve that he does not meet the diagnostic criteria now.

So what has changed?

If, as meems suggests, he was misdiagnosed, then that is a strong argument for more stringent diagnostic criteria. Frankly, I am not persuaded that DSM5 goes far enough.

On the other hand, if he was correctly diagnosed, and no longer presents clinically significant impairments, then we must also reevaluate our belief that AS is a lifelong condition for all Aspies.

The only guy who is an idiot is the guy that will not look in the mirror and analyse what he sees honestly.

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Ann2011
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16 Mar 2013, 2:32 pm

ruveyn wrote:

QFT
His focus was mostly about the social impairments of autism. Things like sensory perception problems and difficulties verbalizing are also important.

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