DSM V changes.. How do you feel?

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I like it.

No more AS vs HFA and failing to meet AS stereotypes... or not. These could linger for years for all I know, until newer stereotypes emerge and are establish that are just as annoying and difficult to live with as they're now.

I'm not sure about the severity levels. I don't think I'll like those.

I think I'd be so mild, but there are people much milder than me. And there are people who I would think of as mild tough more severe than me, but who're so much more severe than others who are mild but still autistic and impaired... likely, things will be as confusing as they're now.

How much would these levels mean anyway? I imagine they'd be used as individually and differently by specialists as the labels we have now are used today.

this is pretty interesting.. can you quote any sources with more info on this?

I'm just plain relieved. I've been given every autism spectrum diagnosis (besides Rett's and CDD, both of which are really rare), and it'll be nice just to say ASD and leave it at that. They'll probably call me "mild" because I'm living independently--that's the only thing that worries me because I do have some traits that I have in common more with people who can't live on their own than with people who usually can. I don't want to be pigeonholed into "mild ASD" any more than I want to be pigeonholed into Asperger's.

I've been hanging around the autism community for a long time, and I never saw any distinct divisions between subgroups of autistics. All I see is that the autism spectrum is very diverse, and that two cases can look very different; but that when you look at all of the cases together, there are no divisions, only continuums. I think it's time we faced the fact that autism can range from barely-there to overwhelmingly-obvious, just like many other disorders that come in spectrums (CP, mental retardation, epilepsy, dyslexia and other learning disabilities...)

In fact, I'm pretty sure that there are more neurological disorders that come in spectrums than those that come in subgroups. Autism, in that respect, is in the majority--not at all unusual. Until we learn to deal with the fact that autism doesn't come in subgroups and that two autistic people can be very different in prognosis and skill levels, we're going to think that a single diagnosis is "odd"; but once we get that, it'll seem like the most natural thing in the world. Just like the flu can be either deadly or a three-day annoyance, just like a stroke can mean a tremor in one hand or being totally locked in, just like CP can mean weak ankles or no voluntary movement at all, autism can mean a lot of things, and we don't need separate diagnostic labels to say that. In fact, separate diagnostic labels are damaging, because nobody ever quite falls into one or the other category properly, and any label beyond ASD just means making assumptions that aren't true.

I'm all for it. The merge will help sort out what is an ASD and will cut down on the confusion.

This book I read was called Asperger Syndrome. I forget the authors' names because I had to take it back to the library, but if Verdandi shows up maybe she will be able to tell you. I know she went to check out the book as well.

Oh--you already did! LOL

It's a good book - it references a lot of research, describes the results, the weak points, etc. It's not for light reading thought - it has over 489 pages, not counting the introductory text.

I do not know if it's helpful for anyone trying to find out if they are autistic or not (I always found research heavy stuff to actually make it harder for me to tell if it describes me) but it lays out all kinds of information that I've been trying to find and couldn't easily track down - like research on executive function.

I think such subcategories would help to understand the differences within the spectrum better if there would be enough scientific research supporting it. Somehow it doesn't feel right to me lumping all people with ASD into one category.


I agree with you. I'm often wondering if I fit in the criteria of AS, as my speech is more then odd yet without language learning delay, I have learning difficulties, a touch of ADD, worse than average long-time memory and painfully impaired recalling ability, ineffective focusing ability, I had some mild self-care learning issues, and I can be both introvert (aloof) and extrovert (active but odd). So, PDD-NOS? Anything but that "junk drawer".

Thanks to both of you.

There's one diagnosis, but there's actually multiple dimensions behind it: Each impairment has its own severity, which is already improved over what we have now. See what Callista said about cerebral palsy ranging from weak ankles to the inability to move, or strokes causing anything from a mild tremor to locked in syndrome. A lot of existing diagnoses already lump all people into one category.

It really doesn't bother me either way, but I'd want to know what it'd do to my AS diagnosis if it changed.

What I do want is when people list "autism" somewhere, for it to be explicitly either classic autism or ASDs. I want to know what I qualify for for help, and I "only" have AS, not classic autism, as I had no communication delays.

I can see arguments both ways.

Tuttle--When it changes, Asperger's will change to "Autism Spectrum Disorder". Mostly a semantic thing; the therapy/education available should still be the same.

Nice

Why do people keep using the term "lumped in"? it sounds insulting, you get "lumped in" with people you don't want to be accoatied with.

Anyhoo, the dx'es is extremely inconsistant, I had a qualified professional tell me that every LFA has mental retardation, and pointed out one case off the top of my head where a LFA had a high IQ annd he had no idea - like most people don't!

And what of the difference between HFA and aspergers? nonsense, utter bullhockey, you get people saying HFA are more likely to be allof and not want friends but aspies do want friends and such, then why are their aspies that fit the HFA paragram? and visa versa?

Or how about people in the middle, why is there so little work on mid functioning autistics like me or super trouper or littlelily? (pardon me if you don't consider yourselves mid functioing)

I think anyone who opposes it is opposing it without knowing some of these facts, primarily that there are LFA who are intelligent, that IQ tests don't work on autistics and never have, and the idea that the difference between classic autism and aspergers doesn't hold up since basically every original patient Leo Kanner worked with (the first ever classic autism patients) didn't have language delays.

None of it holds up and I am shocked by how few professionals know any of this, I basically made autism my special interest for a few weeks and I feel I already know more about it then any professional I've worked with, which I'm glad to show off about because it just shows how great having the ability to have an SI is.

This massively confuses me....I don't understand what the authors are saying. I can tell that they're making reference to speech delay as a differentiating factor between AS and HFA, but I'm hazy on what they mean when they refer to developmental "pathways" and "trajectories".

Are they saying that development of speech affects or predicts development in everything else? If so: That would seem to be true only to a certain extent....Given that:

1) Speech and language are so complicated that there are entire fields of study dedicated to them (linguistics and its subspecialties, and speech and language pathology). A speech delay or difficulty with using language can be caused by any number of different cognitive and physiological factors, and more than one of those factors may affect one individual with autism but not another such individual with the exact same diagnosis--perhaps even the same level of intellectual functioning.

2) There are some NT children who have a speech delay with no identifiable etiology--they have no specific language disorder and no other issues in development or cognitive abilities. (One of my uncles didn't speak coherently until he was five or six and no particular cause was ever found--but his development was otherwise normal....once his language development caught up with everything else, he was just fine.) The existence of such children seems to complicate the idea that language development alone can be relied on to differentiate between broader developmental pathways.

3) "Autistic children who do not develop fluent language would then fall farther and farther behind." True, but language is only one aspect of cognition--including social cognition. A person with autism who never learned to speak might still learn how to understand speech, and to understand nonverbal social information.

4) Does "fluent" speech just refer to the ability to produce words that sound coherent--or does it also refer to the ability to effectively use and understand those words? If "fluent speech" just refers to the ability to say things that sound coherent, then acquisition of fluent speech is potentially useless when it comes to social cognition and communication, and wouldn't necessarily improve a person's ability to acquire useful life skills.



Me too...while the DSM-V doesn't actually do this, I think it gets closer than the DSM-IV. There are three functioning levels applied to core symptoms, with the overall functioning level used to describe the level of support a person might need.

The whole diagnostic paradigm confuses me...I get stuck at this particular thought when I'm trying to put all the information I understand together: if all the conditions that are part of the autism spectrum are, by virtue of being part of that spectrum, referred to using the word "autism" then how can some of them not actually be called "autism"? At first I thought I was just having trouble with the words....but I think it's a conceptual issue, as well.

Personally, I don't care what label I have...I just want that label and all the words and concepts associated with it to make some sort of sense to me....which mine does, because it's just "cognitively high functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder." "Asperger's" confuses me, in the context of it being part of the autism spectrum but often described as "not autism."

My opinion of the change is that the people who create the DSM don't understand AS.