Hypercoaster wrote:
I'm diagnosed with Asperger's, and that is still what I use as my diagnosis. Asperger's is still an ICD-10 diagnosis, and I still believe that it is an actual clinical entity. I was quite disappointed by its removal in the DSM-5. I think there are still a lot of things to sort out, like why some people with Asperger's have a more classic autism phenotype and others (like kraftiekortie mentioned) have more of an NVLD phenotype. I have been officially diagnosed with both Asperger's and NVLD, even though NVLD has never been an official DSM diagnosis. (My IQ scores meet the proposed NVLD criterion of a 15+ difference between PIQ and VIQ.) I think this severity scale that the DSM-5 uses doesn't describe the picture well enough. There are definite different ASD subtypes, and only explaining them by their severity level isn't a good approach for research purposes, in my opinion.
I agree. The DSM-5 has blurred the lines between different presentations of autism. It would be better to have separate autism spectrum disorders with their own severity levels. For example, infantile autistic disorder, autistic disorder, Asperger's disorder, other specified autism spectrum disorder and autism spectrum disorder-nos.