Asperger diagnosis pre-1994

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Today I got myself a copy of my Doctor’s note it was basically a brief summary of my medical notes and in there it dates that I had a diagnosis of Asperger dating back to 1990. I always thought that it was made an official diagnosis in the UK in 1994. I need a bit of a lesson in the history of diagnosis. I always thought I was diagnosed in 1997/98 which is on another note.

I do have memories of seeing pedatricians when I was about 4 years old which was in 1990. But even my mum says was never told anything when I was told years later in 1998.

I think I need to investigate this a lot more.

The name has changed over the years, though it's the same condition.

From infancy in the late 1970s to teens in the early 1990s I was / had: idiot-savant, gifted-disabled, twice-exceptional, Asperger's syndrome and now in 2018 it's Autism Spectrum Disorder without verbal or cognitive delay.

I was actually diagnosed with autism back around 1964. As well as “brain-damage/injury” around the same time. There were probably other outmoded diagnoses applied to me in the 1960s.

Asperger’s became “official” in 1994 in the US with the adoption of the DSM-IV.

Asperger's existed since 1981 when Lorna Wing coined the term. There was no criteria for it then until 1989 and there is the Gillberg Criteria that was made in 1991. The DSM-IV version just didn't come out until 1994.

Asperger's was called autistic psychopathy by Hans Asperger but Lorna changed it to Asperger's after him.

I believe children with AS were given other labels like global developmental delay, learning disability, ADHD, and other component labels. I was only described as having autistic like behavior or autistic speech delay or being an unusual child. My main diagnoses was Language disorder. I was once reading a book about kids with learning disabilities that was first published in 1984 and I wondered how many of those kids would have been diagnosed as having Asperger's today.

Under the DSM-V it's now Autism Spectrum Disorder, but I prefer Asperger's syndrome because it is more specific.

A goofy analogy is that I have a loaf of bread. You could just call it bread and you'd be right, but when there are so many different kinds with different flavors and properties it's helpful to know that I have sourdough, which is quite different from rye or naan. Each Aspie is different and my sourdough might be whole wheat versus someone else's San Francisco, but at least you get the general idea.