DSM V changes.. How do you feel?

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Do you think AS should have be it's own disorder? I've heard lots of people say this.

I've also heard a few professionals say that they'd even like to see each ASD be it's own separate disorder. Classic autism being the only disorder on the "old spectrum" with the name Autism. My only issue with this is that it creates a LOT of work. I think there'd be issues with funding and treatment available to some disorders as separate.

That's precisely it, I think. There's a lot of elitism out there--Aspies thinking that they are better than auties because they're talented eccentrics rather than pitiful disabled people; auties thinking they're better than Aspies because they "know what it's really like" and have to try so much harder than the Aspies.

Both things are a way we deal with prejudice against disability--on the one hand, we insist we're not disabled and take on the label "Asperger's"; on the other hand, we claim that our disability makes us inspirational people dealing with horrible obstacles, and take on the label "Autistic". I know this, because I have a tendency to switch back and forth randomly between both fallacies. Neither one is correct--in reality, we all have both talents and impairments, and while we are disabled, that doesn't mean that living our lives as we want to live them makes us heroic or inspirational or admirable in any way--we are just people who happen to be autistic and happen to be disabled. It is often difficult for people dealing with the reality of disability to shake off both extremes and realize that the presence of disability or the lack thereof doesn't have to include value judgments at all.

It's divide-and-conquer, letting us fight each other instead of fighting for each other as we ought to be doing. But it's unfortunately not uncommon at all--there's a similar divide between Deaf and hard-of-hearing, and between people who use wheelchairs and people who use crutches/braces/walkers/etc. but can walk sometimes or all the time.

We need to dump all this More-Heroically-Disabled-Than-Thou/Not-As-Pitifully-Disabled-As-Thou and start actually thinking scientifically about autism as a syndrome; and once we do that, I think we'll discover that we don't need to divide it up into subcategories--that, in fact, subcategories only serve to create stereotypes that give professionals lots of false assumptions to hold before they even evaluate any given case.

I don't see why people feel so anxious about the umbrella diagnosis ASD or Autistic Spectrum Disorder. People's perception about what Autism is needs to change. The problem right now is there are too many stereotypes about Autism. Autism doesn't always mean a child alone in the corner of a room cut off from the rest of the world. Children with Asperger's Syndrome or HFA are just as Autistic as someone with Kanner's. People have posted they feel just as impaired in some ways even though they are not Dxed with Kanners. People need to be educated about the spectrum nature of Autism to really understand what Autism means. The new guidelines help with this.

I do think that AS should be categorized as it's own disorder. It might create more work for people but oh well.

I'm not sure right now. I guess I'll have an opinion when I see it in practice.

I'm slightly wary of misdiagnosis, though.

So still incredibly hard to find anything at all because I'm "too old" to have been diagnosed recently?

Even if it is mostly a semantic thing - there will still be changes - for example, you can get reduced cost bus tickets if you have autism, however, does that count AS or not? Can I request half price tickets for all public transportation in the area because I'm on the spectrum and because of those traits I can't drive? It'd mean that there is an answer to questions like that.

On the other hand, people who don't have some struggles people who are "lower functioning" have, quite possibly will have greater difficulty going through life sharing that they have an ASD when their isn't a distinction.

There are stereotypes both ways, and it could both help and hurt to just mix them. Personally, because I have the problems like the inability to drive, it'd probably help me more for it to just be swapped to Autism Spectrum Disorder completely, as long as AS doesn't automatically mean you are labeled as a "mild" case, with its own set of stereotypes that are just a mixture of PDD-NOS and Asperger's currently.


I think there should be the umbrella term of ASDs, I'm just not sure whether or not their should be only that term, or whether that'd do more harm than good.

Currently, I am an aspie, I have a disability, and I'm on the autistic spectrum. None of this will change with the labels, but the stereotypes could easily go either direction - towards "No you're too high functioning to really have a disability" or towards "you can't hold a job, you're autistic". Either one of these could really harm my daily living. On the other hand, the change in labels might make it easier to just say that I'm on the spectrum, that I approach the world differently than NTs and that I need accommodations and will never be able to drive without "but you're high functioning, of course you can drive".

It's more than just a question of the labels, its a question of what the stereotypes actually do to people while we try to break them down. I don't know whether this will actually help identify what people have any more than before, or whether it'll just make it more complicated because of not having separations that theoretically mean something.

However, wanting AS to be separate because of not wanting to be "lumped in" with those "lower functioning" than them, is exactly not the reason to keep it separate. We are on the spectrum. We are facing the same difficulties. Those of us with AS and those of us with HFA vary between us in how "functioning" we are.

I just want to be sure that people are getting the help they should be, not being treated like they are something they are not. That's why I got a diagnosis in the first place, and the diagnoses, whether it changes or not, should keep that as a central point.



--
Edit:

Right, having just looked back at the DSM-5 proposal.

My favorite change is the inclusion of hypo- or hypersensitivies. Part of me just for that change prefers the DSM-5. My hypersensitivies are a huge part of my AS, and while they were taken into account in my diagnosis, they aren't actually part of the old diagnosis criteria.

@Tuttle

If your disorder is on the spectrum currently, you would have a new diagnosis of ASD. As would classic Autism, Fragile X, PDD-NOS, etc. Perhaps not formally. This would allow you to have all of the same benefits as anybody else also classified as having ASD. So, yes, you would get the bus pass at the same rate as someone currently labeled as Autistic because you have ASD.

I would anticipate some of the "benefits" people get as Autistic currently will change. I am thinking that it may be too much for some budgets with the new system. Not sure, but it would seem very reasonable.

I am all over the diagnotic map to. My childhood history point strongly toward classic autism exept I had a special interest in imaginitive play which exluded me from the diagnosis...so I got PDD-with classic autism traits. However services for PDD are not as good as those for classic autism which made my mom had to fight much harder for me when I was in school.
Hell, my mom didn't even know that PDD was on the spectrum untill I found out myself.
Nowdays I act more like an aspie than an autie. Unlike most people, my IQ got higher as I got older, now I am in the gifted range.
So from my personal experience, I can see how the different diagnosis are really just on a spectrum. In a way it makes me feel better that I fit squarely within something for once in my life.
I mean really, I am moderate-severely hearing impaired...but not deaf enough for the deaf community
I bisexual which means I am not gay enough for the gay comminity
I have a dozen other things that I fit halfway into
so to know that I am not half-autie, but fully ASD is kinda of a relief.

I think also that the traits for each person cross diagnotic boundaries to some degree or anouther. That is part of the reason that so many of us get misdiagnosed is because many of us dont fit sqaurely within the invidual diagnoses.
While yes, It may be because of the clinicians lack of an ability to pin down the correct diagnosis...I think it is still a good move

I highlighted some of the differences. Most doctors aren't going to explain things in depth to their patients (some of them even can't).

Actually the scientific thing to do would be to heed the article I cited. Influenza and the cold can have very similar, if not identical symptoms, but they are entirely different viruses and have entirely different implications. What if the medical community didn't distinguish between the two? It would be scientifically inaccurate and we would have many problems on our hands.

...except that classic autism and AS aren't separate things. There isn't any obvious difference--not like a different virus or a different string of DNA. Practically everyone who is diagnosed with AS can also be diagnosed with classic autism, and the exact same symptoms show up in both. In adulthood, AS and classic autism can be and usually are indistinguishable. And, when you look at a severe case in adulthood, it usually looks a great deal like a mild case in childhood. There are a great many cases of "LFA" which have more in common with "AS" in terms of traits, and the only difference is severity. And there are cases of AS which are very different from other cases of AS.

I know a lot of the AS experts like to say that AS is special; but if you read their books, you often start to realize that the people yelling loudest about AS being a distinct group often have the narrowest, most stereotypical view of AS, and often associate AS closely with intelligence and special abilities. It seems like a lot of these folks have a lot to lose, professionally, from having AS merged with autism.

I think it's a good idea (that Asperger's will no longer be a separate disorder) because I think that, as a disorder, it's not distinctly separate from autism and it's arbitrary which label a person gets. There's a lot of variety in the autism spectrum, but the current labels don't accurately describe that variety. Until we (they) come to understand the differences in a more systematic way, better to have one general label, and then address the variation on the individual level.

That is incorrect. AS exists because Hans Asperger noticed that some children had autistic traits but presented differently than those with classic autism.



This is also incorrect. I don't know where you are getting your information but it's not substantiated by anything I've ever come across.

I know a lot of the AS experts like to say that AS is special; but if you read their books, you often start to realize that the people yelling loudest about AS being a distinct group often have the narrowest, most stereotypical view of AS, and often associate AS closely with intelligence and special abilities. It seems like a lot of these folks have a lot to lose, professionally, from having AS merged with autism.[/quote]

I'm all for it. Yes, there are advantages to the DSM-IV categories but I think they are far outweighed by the disadvantages of having too many categories that are too difficult to distinguish and require another category just as a catch-all for the people who don't fit any of the others.

Another positive of the DSM-V is that a diagnosis of ASD will no longer make one ineligible for a diagnosis of ADHD (which is currently technically the case, but widely disregarded). This no longer forces practitioners to choose between two apparently valid diagnoses.

Hans Asperger was completely unaware of Kanner's work, and vice versa, so it would actually be difficult for Asperger to work from a criteria such as "presented differently than those with classic autism," especially since no such thing as classic autism had been defined at that point.

Some of Kanner's patients, are from Kanner's own descriptions, rather indistinguishable from Asperger's patients.

This blog post: http://ballastexistenz.wordpress.com/20 ... torically/ has descriptions in Kanner's own words.



Research cited by Tony Attwood in The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome as well as research cited in the rationale for the DSM-V changes point out that it is virtually impossible to diagnose anyone with Asperger's Syndrome due to the criteria that a diagnosis of autism should take precedence. This is not clinical practice, but it has been researched.

This thread links some of it:

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt167724.html

I'm not sure how I feel about it. I just discovered that I might be Aspie a few months ago, and I haven't been diagnosed by a doctor yet. When I went through the DSM 5 criteria I realized that actually fits me better and makes more sense than the DSM-IV criteria. It's also a lot easier to understand vocabulary wise. So I don't know.