Holy Smokes I'm no Longer Going to be Autistic!

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I don't think I fit the proposed DSM5 criteria!

What are the new criterion?

Count your blessings!

According to your profile you don't have a diagnosis anyway,s o what difference does it make? It's not as if you've changed.

Maybe she's changed it in advance.

lols i was diagnosed a couple a year or two ago. i don't i put that. XD

http://www.dsm5.org/ProposedRevisions/P ... spx?rid=94

So all ASD's will b in a single category? Autistic or not.... I suppose it simplifies things... but it seems to me that can cause problems when someone is higher functioning and doesn't "act" autistic. *shrugs* not like any of us have a say

I don't disagree with collapsing it all into one spectrum category since the divisions between autism and Aspergers are a definitive gray area, but I dislike that there seems an emphasis and restricting the criteria to greater severity of presentation. It's stupid to call someone a "broader phenotype" if they experience daily problems due to lying on this autism spectrum but being considered too "light". What sense does that make? Diagnoses are meant to identify deficits and hopefully help people, but if lighter variants are chucked off the spectrum and not able to get services... well, that just seems a crime to me.

Like shaybugz says, people who just don't act "autistic enough" will be left behind, even though their problems are autistic in nature.

I disagree. If the new criteria are applied correctly, if you are considered Autistic now, you should still be considered Autistic when DSM V comes into play.

The new criteria actually encompasses all AS traits. The only problems that may occur is with doctors who misread or misunderstand some of the newer criteria. That is probably going to happen occasionally, but that is a problem with proper training, not a problem with the criteria.

The fact is, the way the criteria are set up now, a LOT of diagnoses that should be happening, are not, for the exact same reason. Poorly trained professionals, and too much debate due to the complexity of how they are now set up.

If anything, the new criteria are much simpler, all in one place, and over time should help prevent the amount of misunderstanding and debate that is happening now.

The bottom line is, if you aren't Autistic with the DSM-V, you probably aren't Autistic under DSM-IV anyway.

The new criteria will help to create better understanding.

Skimmed through those revisions. I'm still ASD.

Don't get me wrong, I think in many ways the criteria are written better. However, you'll notice that it is technically more difficult to get an ASD diagnosis on the Asperger's end in that you now have to fulfill all three criteria, whereas before under the AS diagnosis, only two needed to be fulfilled.

To be honest, I think the criteria list is somewhat bollocks anyways. I'm in autism research studying neurobiology, and from what I've seen, socialization and communication are not reliable criteria and can be produced in numerous ways (or deficits covered up in numerous ways too). The repetitiveness and sensory issues, however, are another story. Were the list up to me (which of course it's not! ), I would define the behavioral syndrome as comprising aspects of neural repetition as exhibited by traits of obsessive-compulsiveness, higher rates of anxiety, sensory issues, etc., while I would look for evidence of larger neural network discoordination, of which social ineptitude and communication deficits are examples but not 100% reliable behavioral markers, largely because these symptoms can be produced through other means of disruption that aren't inherently "autistic". I would instead look across many areas of information processing to assess entire trends, within which socialization and communication would be included yet not wholly deciding factors.

Also just wanting to point out that while the spectrum is still defined behaviorally, it is kind of a circular argument to say "Such-and-such is autism, to seek out individuals who fulfill those criteria, and say, 'See! We were right!" (Not that the same circularity doesn't apply to my ideas above as well. )

Point being: autism is a gray blob of poorly defined mushy goo. Even if you pin it to the wall, it slips and spreads and soon falls to the floor to resume its previous state. And given how heterogeneous it is, at the gene level on up to the behavioral one, it's probably a collection of MANY conditions. Although I personally have faith that there are underlying commonalities. In my work, I seek those at the molecular level, within the intracellular pathways that are active during early development.

Well, I'm still autistic. WOO

I'm always going to be HFA, even if a book like the DSM, changes every so often which was when exactly? 1980, 1994, 2013 now?