"Diseases in Children"

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Translated from Swedish to English:
'My child has a disease - what am I going to do? When should I seek medical advice?
In a simple manner describes the most common diseases in children.'
http://www.growingpeople.se/templates/O ... x?id=13649

In that list they've written, inter alia: Asperger's syndrome, Autism, ADHD.
Oh, I get so frustrated.
I have send them a mail about it.
Please do the same, maybe they'll stop writing that AS and other neuropsychiatric diagnoses are diseases.

Last edited by Withdrawn on 11 Feb 2010, 10:10 am, edited 1 time in total.

We recently updated insurance information and even though I explained what AS was to the woman on the phone, she listed my oldest has having a mental disorder.

It's really strange how they list AS / ADHD etc. with lots of different diseases.

I do not see autism as a mental disorder.

I see autism as a neurological disorder because it does not necessarily inhibit cognitive functioning.

But this is just my opinion.

I don't have a mental disorder. I'm unique.

I didn't say I agreed with it, I was just expressing my exasperation with her lack of intelligence. I cannot even call it a lack of information because I had explained to her already that it was a neurological disorder...

I have been through this many times with this kind of thinking in the lay population. I view autism as a difference and not as a disorder. Therefore, I view myself as different. Even for those of you here at the WrongPlanet that view our autism as a disorder more than a difference, I would think you would still agree that the general populations' perception of autism is often incorrect.

People want to label everything that isn't in the majority a disease, especially medical/psychiatric professionals who have this need to categorize EVERYTHING, including typical human characteristics. I think that we should stop being so offended by it. We know that AS isn't a disease and if they choose to use that word to describe it, let them. Anyone with any kind of intelligence will realise that what people write isn't entirely accurate.

Maybe she just figured it was a technicality (the difference between neurological and mental.. I didn't used to know what it was either) and you were like one of those parents who says "my kid isn't obnoxious, he's energetic" or something.

Anyway, MorbidMiss... does it say the diseases on the list are diseases found ONLY in children? Because lots of diseases appear at a young age and continue into adulthood, or have the same chance of appearing in young people as in old people.. it's not like there are only kid diseases and adult ones, and if a disease is both kid and adult, it would go on the kid list, of course, so parents can see it there...

LoL I don't know, I was not the original poster.

I am vaguely familiar with the fact that Swedish medicine and insurance issues can be laborious and tricksy though so who knows?

Also my children are obnoxious! It just isn't always their fault. *snicker*

It still gives the wrong impression. It would make sense to call autism a "disorder" or a "disability" or a "condition"; but a "disease" carries the definition of something that is out of balance from what it normally is. Autism isn't that way. It's life-long, and it's the base state of the person. "Disease" is a synonym for "sickness", the word for a human body or mind out of homeostasis. But that's not autism. It's simply not correct.

I don't know whether the language the web page is written in has the same connotation for the word "disease" that English does; but if it does, they need to use a more general word. The range of the diagnoses they're listing on that page probably means they need to use a very broad term--"condition" or "diagnosis", probably.

Oh no...I'm such a horrible disease...wipe me out!! !

Colds and Asperger's on the same list!

Sorry for the title, "Children's diseases", I guess I wrote wrong.
Yes, 'sjukdom' corresponds to disease, sickness.