Doctors are 'failing to spot Asperger in girls'

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Your location indicates you are in Antarctica, so it might be $1000. where you are. I live in the States and have insurance. I went for three visits with observation and diagnostic tools and was DX for a $20 co pay per visit.

It was a 'forensnic' psychologist, used to diagnosing inmates of the State Hospital of Oregon not far from where I reside. My chart notes read "denies reading "Gun and Ammo" and "Soldier of Fortune" magazine" but the science is sound. Anytime they Diagnose "300.00 (autism)" insurance won't pay, but if it is a co-morbid then most behavioural health benefits will cover continued therapy for 'anxiety' or 'obsessive compulsive disorder'.

I sometimes wonder if it's all about non-acceptance of the natural extremes of 'male' behavior, rather than anything medical. Of course, the variety of human nature being as it is, some females will also be within the spectrum of traits.

You do realize that none of the traits you mention are actually AS traits?

I didn't list traits, but how behavour caused by those traits may be externally judged. The things I listed e.g. "quiet, studious, fashion unaware" have all been used by others to describe me, for example.

Of course someone will chime in that they are "noisy, lazy and fashion obsessed" yet have also been diagnosed with AS. One swallow does not make a summer.

One of the points of underdiagnosis of female AS is that it goes unseen because it was considered normal for girls to be quiet and less extrovert than boys. It appears introversion can no longer be considered normal for *anyone* (in the western world, at least), so I expect the increase in female diagnosis rate to increase. I don't expect any conclusive environmental, genetic or biological 'flaws' to ever be found to explain the increase

One description of ManErg does not make a description of AS.

You are described a certain way, therefore the description is of AS rather than you, and if people with AS are not as you have been described, they are just one person?



I think perhaps you have conclusions on which you base your reasoning, including what information you will consider.

Human nature to do that. For example, look at the way you are dismissing and rejecting the information I provided on the experience and diagnosis of *my* AS.

In what way have I rejected or dismissed information about your diagnosis?

I have argued that your experience of AS and your diagnosis do not define or determine the traits of AS, nor are the traits you describe diagnostic criteria.

In fact it is you who are rejecting and dismissing the experience of others by defining it according to your personal individual traits, and then dismissing out of hand any swallow who fails to conform to AS as defined by how some people have described some aspects of your personality/behavior/traits.

I still don't see you making any attempt to accept information that contradicts your pre-determined conclusion. Only more blatant dismissals of contradictions.

Go on...let a little bit of somebody elses reality in....it's good for you....

Pandd,
It is important to state that the concept of "medicalisation of behaviour", along with ideas such as "increasing intolerance to introversion", "serious flaws in the diagnostic criteria for Autistic Spectrum disorders" are NOT my personal inventions!

I am nowhere near smart enough to have figured out any of these ideas. These are all ideas that have been put forward by numerous others. My opinion is formed from the balance of the large amount of literature I've read over the years, based on my personal experience of course. They are not the creations of a single maverick unqualified WP poster with no credentials.

Nobody has ALL of the information. I am not an academic who is pushing the idea that Aspergers is at least partly socially constructed. Surely you should be engaged in correcting the faulty reality of the *professionals* who although in a small minority, are hawking what to you is obviously incorrect information?

I am well aware that your view is shared by the majority of those in the medical profession. I've read reams of that stuff, too. I'd just like to include some links to the kind of ideas that have influenced my thinking away from that of AS as a biological disorder.
(Note that increasing feminization in school will not just affect boys...which is relavent to this thread)

From Wikipedia:
"There is little consensus among clinical researchers about the use of the terms Asperger's syndrome or Asperger's disorder, and there are questions about the empirical validation of the DSM-IV and ICD-10 criteria."

Why push WP posters on a forum for ordinary people for empirical evidence when the 'professionals' who define the criteria can't provide it?

If you really have the objective information on the definition and cause of AS, I suggest you get in touch with the experts immediately, as they are clearly lacking it!

"There are no specific cognitive, metabolic or neurological markers and no medical tests for ADHD."

Relavent as the same is true of Aspergers.

When I first heard of AS, I held the "neurological disorder" belief. Over time, due to my own reading and through posts from WP members, I altered this view and started to absorb the idea of "difference, not disability".

I do not believe it sensible to dismiss ones direct, personal experience in favour of something that comes out of a corporate funded lab. When I believed I had some kind of "neurological disability", I was depressed. The improvement began when I started to doubt that I was diseased. I am transformed since accepting that I, like every other person on the planet, is unique and different.

My current belief is that *my* Aspergers is mostly, perhaps entirely, a social construct. I have no disability, no disorder. no genetic defect, but I do have my unique differences that I now choose to embrace.

You are absolutely and demonstrably wrong when you accuse me of starting with a conclusion and ignoring information that contradicts it.

This idea is a political/ideological idea, and could equally be applied to being blind. Is being blind cultural non-acceptance of a particular personality style?

At the end of the day, you are arguing that something that does not coincide with any particular personality type or range, is a personality type or range of some kind, and you seem unable to produce any evidence that this is less impossible than it appears to be.

A set of biological features/modes of functioning explains what we see with AS, in part because it does not require that everyone with AS share personality type, or any personality element whatsoever.

The group "people with AS" includes people who are introvert and extrovert, passive and active, avoiding and engaging, risk taking and risk avoiding, etc in terms of their personality propensities.

If AS were a personality type, there would be an overarching similarity in personality measures of some kind or other, that was universal and exclusive to people with AS.

If AS were a biological-cognitive issue, we would predict that it might have consequences for personality formation, but we would not expect that it would necessarily be determinative, such that both some similarity and disparity are accounted for with this theory.

This contrasts to a personality model. We necessarily are predicting that persons described are the same as or similar to each other, with regards to personality, in some particular "personality" measure or other. The actual lack of universal and exclusive coincident of a personality style, or personality range, or some personality measured unifying feature, is an insurmountable barrier to "AS is a personality" as a theory. Logically if the people it describes are disparate in personality type/range/etc, then it is not a personality at all.

The difference is not socially constructed. The most that can be suggested is that the idea/conceptualization of differences referred to by AS is socially constructed and behaviorally influencing. The same is true of blindness and Down Syndrome.

This is hardly a surfeit of evidence. It certainly does not suggest in particular that AS is merely a personality type. But more significant is that even if we form a theory that AS = personality, believing it should not proceed reasonable attempts to "test" it.

The most obvious first reasonable step would be to check if any personality type/cluster is universal and exclusive to those "AS" identifies, because only if such a correlation is true, can the theory be true.

The theory fails right here, because contrary to the theory, AS does not identify any group that can be described using a personality frame-work to distinguish those with AS from those without, because people with AS vary in personality from each other, not dis-similarly to how those without AS vary in personality to each other.

Evidence for what? It is not the best evidence that anyone has come up with for AS existing or being a medical condition rather than a personality type.


Not reasonably. It certainly cannot be reasonably interpreted as evidence that AS is advantageous or neutral to well-being and functionality rather than being a disability.
It is however evidence of a biological marker that is not plausibly described as a personality trait, nor plausibly described as influenced by personality. It is a piece of evidence that in and of itself, casts significant doubt on "AS as a personality", in addition to the seemingly insurmountable barrier presented by the evidence that people with AS do not share personality type/range, or any particular cluster/constellation of personality traits/elements, universal and exclusive to the group described by "AS".
This is an irrelevant strawman.
This is arguing against a "gene difference therefore disability" model where no such model is necessary or integral to "AS as a medical condition".
The actual medical model is more like "disability/disorder therefore some cause or set of causes such as inheritable genetic differences".

The notion of disorder is not based on the notion that AS is genetic; those who argue AS is caused by vaccines rather than genes strongly argue that it is a disorder, those who argued Kanner type Autism was a psychological/personality response to "cold mothers" argued strongly that it was a disorder. It is a strawman to argue that being genetic does not prove that AS is a disorder because in fact, AS was conceived of as a disorder before anyone thought it might be genetic, and by many of those who continue to argue that it is not genetic.

This seems utterly irrelevant to me, because nothing you have presented in this thread indicates to me that your direct personal experience is somehow dismissed by believing that AS is not a personality type/style/range.

Following the medical model does not necessarily entail being a drugged up anything. Many physicians are very reluctant to medicate, many are over-eager to medicate, and there is significant variance in the extent to which physicians materially inform their patients.
The diagnostician who diagnosed me subscribes to a medical model and only brought up medication to assert that he did not believe that there was any reason to even consider any form of medication at that time. This is stark contrast to the physician who claimed that what characterized me was a personality type rather than a neurological disorder.

Over-prescription is I suspect a very real problem that happens to effect people with AS alongside people without. This is not about whether or not AS is a medical condition, but rather a potential instance of a widespread problem in the medical field (one that is probably linked to wider social-cultural-economic factors).

The medical model does not suggest that people with AS necessarily need medicating any more or less in their particular circumstances than someone without AS in materially same circumstances. The fact is medicating is a human practice, so it vulnerable to operator error.
Might it be that the medical practitioner failed you rather than the medical model? The medical model does not dictate prescription practices in detail. Another physician might have not medicated you and instead engaged in therapeutic practices that enhances your well being, while still operating within and consistent with the medical model.

AS is not a disease. It is not necessarily caused by disease. I have no idea why you ever did not doubt AS is a disease, and even less idea still why "not disease" would mean "therefore not a medical condition" or "therefore a personality style/range".

If you are not disabled (significantly impaired in one or more species-typical competencies) then you do not have AS.

None of which actually indicates anything about the truth value of your theory. In fact it seems like more strawman construction because AS is not widely accepted as a disease amongst the majority of relevant professionals.
Do you mean that society alone is the causal factor of your having developed the "personality elements" that you conceive of AS as being, or do you mean that the idea of AS as a coherent distinction is a social construction contrary to reality?
Neither of these appear tenable to me.
If you are not impaired in any species-typical competency/function, then you do not have what is widely referred to as Asperger's Syndrome. Of course this does not necessarily constrain you from constructing narratives that pervasively reject the premise that impairment in species typical competencies/functionality exist, or exist as anything other than difference or personality.

Significantly the personality characteristics of "people with AS" do not coincide with your own and each others in any meaningful way, and I cannot conceive how it could possibly be about personality as a result of this fact.

If you are not ignoring this fact simply because it is contrary to your theory, and you are sufficiently motivated to argue this theory to have posted as many words as you have, it is very odd that you have not simply explained how AS can be about personality when there is no personality range/style/cluster that distinguishes those with AS from those without.

In which case you will have no problem whatsoever reconciling your theory and your assertions in this thread with the fact that people with AS have disparate personalities (and if AS were a personality type this could not be true), and with the fact that there are neurological markers that have been identified as distinguishing (between people with AS and people without an ASD)

Couldn't you just get to the point and link to the conclusive evidence of biological markers that is conspicuous by it's absence when I search Google?

What would be the point of that since I have done so previously for your benefit?