Preliminary draft DSM-5 released

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The new diagnostic criteria looks pretty good to me.

Based on my experience in an AS support group (not my impression of people on the internet I’ve never met), I consider myself to be in the mildly affected range. A formal AS diagnosis is required to participate in the group, so there is a very high likelihood that all members actually do have AS.

Most of the other members of the group seem to have a tougher time than I do with being independent and maintaining a job. Several members need transportation support, special accommodations at work, or struggle in some area more than I do. I am also the only member that wouldn’t take “a magical Autism cure” if it was ever available. That’s why I consider myself to be fairly mildly affected.

I meet the new criteria easily. I don’t think there is a single member of the support group that wouldn’t also meet the criteria easily.

So with that said… in my opinion… People who are accurately diagnosed currently will not be excluded from an ASD diagnosis based on the proposed DSMV criteria.

I like the new criteria.. It makes a lot more sense than the last ones.
I just read it to my parents and they both agree that i easily fit.

Alas, it hasn't officially been included on the spectrum (yet...). It's not recognized by the DSM at all, it's diagnosed using other means (e.g. a compiled list of other tests). I'm actually not sure why it can't fit into the PDD-NOS diagnosis, I don't know enough about PDD-NOS in the DSM.

NLD is basically in a diagnostic nowhere land

I see that there has to be lack of social reciprocity.

I do not think that there are many people here that have a lack of social reciprocity.

This is going to exclude a lot of people.

Lack of social reciprocity coming from the other side.

I'm pretty sure that includes different levels of it, though. It doesn't necessarily mean that you don't respond at all when someone talks to you(that would probably be on the more severe end). I'd definitely say that i have a lack of social reciprocity. I respond to people when they talk to me(well, usually anyway..), and when i feel like it i start conversations. I have reciprocal communication, but as far as actual social relationships, beyond just simple conversation, i don't know how to do the whole back-and-forth that keeps normal friendships going and that forms whatever big invisible social network that everyone has going.

I certainly have a lack of social reciprocity - and as far as I can tell, so do all the other members of the ASD support groups that I attend. We try - but personally, I just don't seem to have the knack for social give-and-take.

For instance, I can be chatting with someone & it's only after they leave that I think they probably didn't want to hear me talk for five minutes straight about my current special interest. Or, conversely, I walk away after they've told me how they spent their weekend - only to later realize that I should have said something to them about my weekend.

Ciprosity and Reciprocity topic

Reciprocity just means that there is a two way street involved. Back and forth.

Even if I try to reach out, I am avoided like the plague. Only ciprocity here, and bounce back, but no soical engagement.

It is like a game of tennis, but if your partner is a wall, it is called squash.

I would prefer if Austism was NOT referred to as a disorder. It is a difference.

I love that explanation

Yeah, that's really different. I think I might have met this criteria when I was a kid, I had no social skills and I had a hard time saying "thank you" or doing anything in return when people did stuff for me (reciprocity), but those things seem to have improved a lot when I grew up so I don't think it applies to me anymore.

Criteria 2 and 3 I do meet.

Anyway, the new disorder about anger in kids, http://www.dsm5.org/ProposedRevisions/P ... px?rid=397
fits me eerily well. maybe I really had this thing and my rageful outbursts were part of it?

This. I think it's to the point and precise. The only thing I don't like is that they are taking the Asperger's diagnosis out. I wonder what Asperger-specific groups and organizations are going to do about it.

Please remember that there is also the other end of the spectrum, where the individual is severely low functioning. These individuals would not be able to live without support in any sort of society, even if we created an autistics-only community where any person on the spectrum would be able to use their special talents in a meaningful way.
In the society we live in, though, we usually will need accomodations in order to lead happy and successful lives. Because these needs are not the same as that of the majority, and because they can impede us in certain ways, it is considered to be a disorder.

Last edited by MathGirl on 10 Feb 2010, 4:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I imagine they will eventually replace the word "Asperger" with the word "autism" in all their literature (including their name.) It won't even change the acronyms. I think some organizations are already doing this to at least some extent, simply to be inclusive of other autistic spectrum disorders.

They have a while to think about it, since the DSM-V isn't due to be published until 2013.

All I have to say is parents of "real" autistic kids (meaning the moderate, severe, and profound ones) are going to be outraged.

How are they any more "truly autistic"? Besides, there are people on here who are moderate and severe, or who used to be as kids.

They're doing severity levels, remember?

All I know is that the parents of the more severe kids, for the most part, do not view the milder and higher functioning end of the spectrum as full-blown autism. Many of them are against AS being considered "autism" anyway. Now with the DSM-V potentially lumping all of the spectrum diagnoses into ONE distinct category, I'm telling you all, sparks are going to fly and tempers are going to erupt. Should be quite interesting to watch.

Whoops. Off topic. I just went off on another rant about how functioning labels are used to shut autistic people up because they're either too LF to know better or too HF to know "what it's really like". how many times have I yelled about that now? I'll let you guys actually discuss the DSM now.

Last edited by Callista on 10 Feb 2010, 6:33 pm, edited 2 times in total.