SW London's NHS discussing sharply reducing Autism diagnosis

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Autism diagnoses 'could be reduced under NHS plan'

That's precisely what some of us predicted would happen, following the DSM 5 change. We know who will be "excised" from qualifying first (adults, HFA, and particularly women on the Asperger's or HFA part of the spectrum). Then children with "less severe" autism.

The idea (in the article) of using depression to decide whether or not people qualify for autistic assessments surprises me. Depression is not diagnostic of ASD conditions, it is one of many possible co-morbid conditions which occur to some on the spectrum, and is not in itself a sign of autism.

If the proposal of reducing service delivery to "only the most severe cases of autism", as the article states, is true, then there is the danger of services regressing to 1970s levels. What an appalling prospect.

There are usually hidden agendas between policy changes in service delivery for any marginalised group of people, and this is no different.

Seems like they are going from one extreme to another. They toss out Aspergers in favor of calling it HFA level 1. Now it looks like they want to toss out HFA level 1. What's the plan, to give hfa 1 another name like Aspergers?

The London Maudsley specialist autism unit was so understaffed it looked like it would be eventually closed.

Though as specialist as it was, their diagnostic process still wasn't adapted for girls on the spectrum, just boys.

Their assessments are supposed to take a whole day, mine was the same assessment rushed in 2-3 hours. The man was actually rushing and hurrying writing everything down. He said he had to add to it after we left too.

NHS groups backtrack on proposals to restrict autism diagnoses

Consider this a point against socialized medicine, decisions like this will be made when when healthcare is centrally controlled as it is. The 1 out of 64 or whatever number is really scary to them as it use to be higher and most of the new DX's are I imagine considered 'higher functioning' which is a term that needs to be put in the dustbin of history considering higher functioning autistics are even more likely to be unemployed than somebody with classical autism. 80% unemployment is crisis numbers, that's more severe than most disabilities but it seems like some folks would rather just pretend we didn't exist instead of ways to change that number. Services as an adult already slim to none for most people.

This is just other hidden discrimination agendum procedure against "less severe autism" (including those with mental health problems) in order to reduce the concurrent revenue deficit pressures on this NHS branch, just the same moving the goalposts excuse by advertently misinterpreting the DSM 5 ASD criteria for this sole purpose, which should have kept the AS diagnosis by alterating the early developmental trajectory & speech acquisition criteria, therefore incorporating those with a "HFA" diagnosis into it.

I know the economic solution that would put an end to this convoluted financial chicanery that the corporate mainstream media would no doubt calumniate on, but no one will believe me and the Lib/Lab/Con/UKIP/Greens will never solve the problem.