Why is aspergers syndrome grouped with autism?

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These questions seem far to complex to be lumped into groups like "spectrum" analysis which innately suggests a commonality limiting specific analysis of a individual's variances. Is it that the average mind is incapable of comprehending infinite unrelated variance? Thus the oversimplification.

It's just a categorization for similar problems, with sorting in that group. A lot of doctors think there is no difference between High Functioning Autism and Aspergers Syndrome.

One thing I find interesting is that "autistic disorder" parents can have "Asperger's" kids and vice versa, throw in PDD,nos, if you like though it's harder to find adults dx'd with that because of the way they dish out diagnoses.

It's obviously the same thing in that case but just different "versions" of the same heritable genetic effect.

autism_diva wrote:

Adults are an underdiagnosed group, HIGHLY underdiagnosed. Most of us have made our accommodations with the NT world and are just considered "quirky" or "eccentric". Or just considered to be consummate as*holes.

Do you think adults with autistic disorder are underdiagnosed or just adults with AS? It seems like lower functioning people would have been easy to recognize whereas AS people blend in enough to not get diagnosed.

I think of AS as a different type of personality caused by genetics. I think AS was underdiagnosed previously and the rate has remained about the same throughout history.

I think of autistic disorder (which I have) as a medical condition caused by the environment that has greatly increased recently.

No, a lot of autistic adults were previously misdiagnosed with other disorders, not undiagnosed. Dr. Temple Grandin was diagnosed with infantile (childhood) schizophrenia. I went to school with an autistic guy who was diagnosed with schizophrenia until he was in his late 20's. (he's around 40 now) School records in some Northern California counties have shown that while special education enrollment is at about the same rate (as the past), the numbers of students with "MR" (mental retardation) have dropped at the same rate as autistic students have increased.

There are stories like my husband's who went undiagnosed but not unnoticed. He met the same exact criteria as my autistic son, but in the 70's teachers diagnosed you "stupid", "Lazy" "you'll be a bum".

Because they are the same thing: well, autism is usually used to describe people with severe communication difficulties (that didn't improve as they developed), and a greater need for personal care; AS doesn't have the communication difficulties (this doesn't mean that difficulties aren't there), and a greater ability to care for oneself.

The social impairment, obsessions and aversion to change are still there in both.

When brain imaging catches up to the symptoms, they'll probably have specific types of autism, i.e., group 1, 2, 3 and/or 9, each which represent a specific symptom morphology.

But parents who were "low functioning" obvious autistic children grow up and have kids and some of them are "Asperger's". It's not about a disease that makes the autistic kids more autistic. It's just that that is how their brains got wired. There's no evidence that there is a thing, a substance or an experience or whatever that makes autistic kids different from Asperger's kids.

I know a guy who has Williams syndrome which frequently causes the person to be "low functioning" and have a low IQ. But this guy was going for his masters degree. He had the exact genetic defect that made others "low functioning" but he wasn't, and he looked pretty normalish, too. His emotional issues and general attitude made me think about ASD people.

Anyway, it's not that simple that the "diseased" "poisoned" and disordered ones are the losers, the "autistics" and the cool brainy, (non-toxic, healthy) but misunderstood ones have Asperger's.

LFA is still good as humans go. We are stable people, where the rest of the world gets real strange.

We as a group are one in 150, where NT, 2 out of 100 are in jail. So counting reruns, there are six to nine NT doing life on the instalment plan, for each of us.

Very NT does not protect from personality flaws, a lot of drunks. ! in 7, will be inpaitent at the funny farm. The rest just have dangerous personalities. They enjoy making trouble.

People with autism are solid, consistant, predictable, and like to learn.

I think a study of adult outcomes would show us to be superior workers.

All of the stars are called stars, even though some know their spectrum.

Here where the consumers discuss the Doctors, no one is saying they are smart, or helpful, or consistant.

We are going to have to self define, if we want real answers. Their answer is an office visit, maybe a script, that is it. We have lives to live, and no one is in that business.

We get labeled because our thought patterns diverge from the mass. Here we find we share thought patterns. That says we are just a type of human.

Treatment is based on destroying that pattern, leaving nothing, and on drugs, and mostly we are taken to the edge of town and dumped like stray dogs.

They can do without us, and do not want to invest in us.

We have to find our own answers. It is all Autism.

Well then I think some people with AS are related to autistic disorder. I think some people have trouble socializing and communicating because they have high IQs which makes it more difficult to relate to people of average intelligence and they get labeled AS even though there is nothing wrong with them. For example, I think Einstein would have been misdiagnosed with AS if he were alive today.

Of all the conditions on the spectrum of autisms, Asperger's autism is the one closest to Kanner's autism.

zendell wrote:

What basis do you have for thinking Einstein would have been "misdiagnosed"?? His biographies are full of spectrum traits that jump off the page. So do Newton's.

I am reading an interesting book right now, The ADHD Autism Connection, by Diane Kennedy. I purchased it primarily because my sister has been diagnosed with ADHD-I, while I have been diagnosed with Asperger's autism.

The author suggests that these two conditions may be related - perhaps even different degrees of the same neurological condition. She also points out that the same people aspies point to as possibly being aspies (Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, etc.) are also referred to as possibly having ADHD by some people with that condition.

nominalist wrote:

Not only those. In discussing OCD and Tourette's with one my my son's doctors, she made the observation about how the two are centered in neighboring brain regions. I said, "So you're saying OCD and Tourette's are basically the same thing, one just centered in different areas?" and she nodded and said, "NOW you sound like a psychiatrist." Since she was one I think she meant that as a compliment....

I read a cool article about a guy with down's syndrome who was very much like that. He was of above average intelligence if I remember correctly, went to school and had a good social life. He had many of the other symptoms of down's syndrome though and also didn't have neurotypical features, so when people met him, they always assumed he was a 'typical' case until he talked to them.