Autism Spectrum disorders in the new upcoming DSM-V

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Perhaps not exact, but if there are objective variables that one can be compared to, I don't see how it can't do anything but help people. Rather than having to explain a ton of stuff to a government agent (which I doubt the individual in question can do), one can have some basic information from the professional there with them.

I agree witht he flow of information idea.

However you have a problem with objectivity always. See any assumption can't really be objectively true, and as soon as you have one assumption based on another, this is not scientific. This can lead to false treatments. Psychiatry isn't scientific. I think it can do better than it currently is, even if it still won't be scientific.

It's science so far as comparing how objects interact with other objects and their environment, and grouping things into categories based on how they interact with other things; this is how science is, isn't it? Whether it's a person and how they interact with other people, or how a virus interacts with people; it's all behaviour in the end, and it's all based on what we can actually see. If we can't see anything, there's no science. This doesn't counter that there is or there has been poor science in psychology, but psychology is defined as science.

If someone can't drive to work due to the ASD for example, this is easy enough to write down; they then require transport, which can be provided by the government. Easy.

Not really the same. Most people don't view a virus as alive, and it's interaction can be more definable when detectable. Talking about 'behaviour' of a virus really means presentation of a virus on the host in the macro scale. Behaviour with consciousness is a different matter altogether. Behaviourists are awaiting the neurological explanations for their theories. It is slow coming.

Also observace is just that.

Psychiatry will never knows the answers of those questions till Neurology and real science find out a way to biologically define autism and biologically detect its genes and its impact on the brain , that in case if it's really a biological thing.

Psychiatry is too biased and subjective and ...no offense ... can be stupid sometimes , all those DSM criteria has no convincing value.

that is not nice at all that were left like that-someone should have known about it,and the SS can be crap when it comes to giving support to the right people,they have let some people die,and give a lot of support to others,guess it can depend what team are supported by as well [eg,child,mental health,LD,sensory etc]

in the UK,most autists who cant live independantly/need a lot of living support/are lower functioning are forced into residential or group homes-there isnt really the choice of having own place but the same amount of day and night care/support because of the word they really like using so much 'funding'.

as for the post about what services autists can get,there are a lot of things but it all depends on need and the area live in,for example,respite services,day centre services,speech therapy with an autism specialist,a social worker,becoming a service user with the countries autistic society [they offer many services].
there are even fe colleges for autists,never expect services to come to/make aware autist,autist has to come to the services,usually through social services.

Thanks a lot for the detailed explanations. I feel kind of bad now about asking the question because I hate to drag up painful topics. Do you by any chance suffer from extreme anxiety? I have had some similar difficulties but with far less severity during times of anxiety. When I'm anxious I become overwhelmed by everyday tasks, but a lot of that has to do with procrastination. I know what you mean about what you think, what you want to a accomplish, and the actual things your body does being out of whack, but once again I have experienced this to a far less degree than you, it seems.

Apparently the difference is how early you began speaking in childhood. My son had a speech delay, but I can't solidly remember if I did or not. I remember drawing pictures to communicate as early as right before my 3rd birthday, but my mother says I was reading my Babar story books out loud at that time. I may very well be HFA, but on paper, I have Anxiety with mild OCD, coupled with ADD and AS. Prior to coming to this forum, though, I didn't know there was a difference between HFA and Asperger's. My doctors told me that Aspergers was a 'mild form of high-functioning autism.' If there is no real difference between the two, perhaps the distinction should be either clarified or done away with.

The difference has been adequately defined for you in three posts.

I think naming "it" all ASD with subcatagories is superb, It is a shame I fall into the Aspergers sub-catagory, being so grossely misrepresented.

Last edited by Jenk on 09 Oct 2008, 7:18 am, edited 2 times in total.

I have investigated this quite extensively, in practice they don't work and lead 'cookie cutter' arbitrary cut-offs, providing little specific information about the person. You are not going to cram that information into a diagnostic name, so having these one dimensional labels sends the wrong message. There are infinite different versions of 'higher functioning' autism other than the DSM version of Asperger’s. What makes Asperger’s so special that everything else around it doesn’t get a label too?

Take PDD-NOS for instance. It is meant to mean a pervasive developmental disorder that is not specified. Technically PDD would include things like Retts, Schizophrenia, etc. PDD-NOS should NOT specify a level of functioning. In practice some diagnosticians used it to define specific point on the spectrum. If that wasn’t bad enough there was no consistency as to what point, I heard completely differing ideas. You would think ‘Not Otherwise Specified’ would be a clue, but obviously the were in some confusion. In other word a completely pointless label. It is mostly now used as a place holder for children that could turn out a number of ways, as autism shares presentation with other things.

Take nonverbal learning disorder. Most people now agree this is a subset of ASD. The reason why there is such a label is because it was discovered by a complete different and new type of specialist the Neuropsychologists. Neuropsychologists are not interested in studying behaviour, instead they only concerned about how the brain functions under specific psychometric tests and conditions. On the other hand the behaviouralists have done very little else other then behavioural stuff/ Some liken the problem as trying to figure out what an elephant is in the dark from different ends.

I know it is a difficult concept for some to stomach, but terms like Asperger's, PDD-NOS, Kanner's, NLD are essentially meaningless (except for historical purposes) and can adequately replaced with ASD.

I agree with Daniel on some things, but he can contrary on others. For instance that he believe the Hans Asperser’s original observations hold true universally, and not much has changed since. I think this is more a case of wishful thinking. So yes this is the reason, I don’t do it to sound intelligent if that is what you mean.

Diagnosis are not concrete, they are intended to be useful, I don’t believe the arbitrary labels are more helpful than ASD, in the same way I don’t believe that the cut off of IQ of 70 that H. Goddard pulled out of thin air at beginning of the twentieth century should used to determine ‘functioning’. They are increasingly finding you cannot adequately characterize people with arbitrary checklists, and psychiatrists have known for ages that everything is spectral. What I think is starting to click is it is a multidirectional thing, not one dimensional spectrum.

It's overload more than anxiety. It's certainly worse if I have a lot of anxiety, but fixing the anxiety doesn't fix the problem, just makes it somewhat better (anxiety just causing (a) more sensory input in the form of physical reactions to it, and (b) less brain to handle the sensory input with, but the huge onslaught of sensory input is there even when calm). The topic isn't emotionally painful, it's just difficult for me to drag out all he words to it at once (different topics are difficult that way to different degrees at different times).

Yeah, that is how I think of it too.

I do not think that the categories help assign services, in fact I know from experience that they often confuse people and cause people to lack services they need or to get services they don't need.

For assigning services, there should be a full description of the person's abilities, difficulties, and areas where abilities or difficulties can't be determined. And also the range this affects us within, and how it varies over time and in different situations.

I think that those of us who actually have to get (or be denied) the services we need, are owed that much, rather than a single word. Anything less harms people -- already does, and it needs to be stopped. Thousands of autistic people who can't get basic supports because they can speak, and thousands more who are treated like they don't even have minds, not to mention the many who will experience both of those within their lifetime, are affected by the facile and degrading act of assuming that their needs can be adequately described by placing them in one of two or three categories. It not only doesn't improve anything, it provides people with a false sense of understanding of the people categorized that way, and therefore does the opposite of improving things.

(And that's why I argue these things by the way. Because I don't like to watch this happening to people, and I have seen it happen to tons of people who deserve better than that. And for that matter because I have personally had to live with the results of both sets of assumptions, and none of them are accurate or good.)

It seems to me that if the group in the second quote gets its way, then there will be a very great many people who 'have autism' but are not much disordered. As I understand it, anyway, BAP means "displays characteristics of autism at sub-clinical levels, or displays some characteristics of autism, but not enough of them to be classified as having an autism spectrum disorder." The line between being "autistic" and being "not autistic, BAP" is drawn at some level of disorderedness.

This becomes awfully unscientific because there is no hard line between being 'disordered' and merely having difficulties. Some people would be disordered no matter what location and culture you place them in, but I will hazard that for many it's pretty circumstantial.

The waters are futher muddied by the way autism is considered a lifelong diagnosis. I could easily argue that Kamran Nazeer (Send in the Idiots, Bloomsbury, 2006) isn't a disordered adult, but is doing better than I am. But he was a classically autistic child. Perhaps he would satisfy Daniel's 'show me' request, or perhaps his history of difficulties disqualifies him.

I just do not see a difference as a disorder, and yes many on the autism spectrum have problems in society but feel this is because we are not embraced as individuals from birth, and continual to be misunderstood in general due to narrow mindedness and ignorance of others..

Disorder just sounds really negative to me and feel does not help having that attached to us, I know labels are just names and that understanding and acceptance is so much more important.

And of course I realize many of us need support at varying degrees, but also many who have been believed in from birth live in society very happily without support, do they have a disorder! or just differently minded. So I do not feel disorder should be a generalize label for us, and what many of us class as a disorder is often more to do with the co-morbid conditions, not the difference that we need help with, and everyone does not have these associated condition..



Well said...

wow that is crazy the new DSM. somebody said their doctor told them aspergers is a mild form of high functioning autism, i also had a doctor tell me that, i was very confused. as for the verbal iq part daniel said earlier in another post... the last verbal iq test i took online said 65, my doctors all agree its very low, it makes me wonder if that is what got me labeled classic even more? adding adhd though to the spectrum doesnt make much sense though if u ask me, my brother has adhd, he is far from autistic, hes a huge social bug, just doesnt even shut up or sit still and is alittle immature haha.