Slashdot Mirror
No More "Asperger's Syndrome"
cstacy writes "The American Psychiatric Association is dropping Asperger's Syndrome from the upcoming edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5) Its symptoms will be included under the umbrella of Autism Spectrum Disorder, which includes everything from severe autism such as children who do not talk or interact, to milder forms of autism. Asperger's disorder is impairment in social interaction and repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behavior, activities and interests, without significant delay in language or cognitive development. Often the person has high intelligence and vast knowledge on narrow subjects but lacks social skills. DSM-5 comes out in May and will be the first major rewrite in 19 years."
And I thought the headline meant they had a cure!
You're right. The best way to do that would be to stop using names for things, that just makes everything too confusing. Instead we should write a page explaining what we're referring too each time we mention a new concept in conversation.
Labels are shortcuts. They aren't always great, sometimes they need to be adjusted, but in many cases they are necessary and useful. In fact this could easily increase understanding by pointing out that it is not a separate issue, I don't know enough about Aspergers or Autism to conclude that but I get the impression that you aren't concluding the opposite. Just trying to sound intelligent by complaining about labels.
The move itself is akin to splitting off persons who have compulsive tendency in their personalities from those diagnose-able with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, and as such seems to be a reasonable change in categorization.
This is one of the most controversial aspects of psychiatry. Human behavior is all a spectrum. All of us (well, most of us anyway) have personality traits. One may be a bit tightly wound, or a bit too laid back, or sloppy or overly neat, or insensitive or smotheringly kind. The combination of those traits make us who we are.
The classical definition of a personality disorder has been when one or more of those traits becomes a dominant part of a persons personality and becomes 'harmful' to that person or society at large. We've all seen the psychopathic boss, the obsessive person who drives family and coworkers away, the very dependent person who wrecks relationships. But when do you call it a disorder? The first time someone complains about the boss? The first divorce? The first time you get into a fight?
It's a fluid distinction. Our favorite disordered personality, Stephen P. Jobs, might well have been banished to an Ashram if we had any sort of effective treatment. Balmer and Gates might have been turned into, well, dunno, I have nothing here. Anyway, it is at the heart of how we define normal (or at least acceptable). In many ways, we don't really want to get to the point where we can treat it or even understand it.
Careful what you ask for, you just might get it.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I know the trolls are lining up to post "Ass-burgers is fake anyway, I met an Ass-pie once, and he was fine."
So let me say this first: If you've met an Aspie and dismissed the condition because that person "seemed fine", then please consider that what you didn't see was the countless hours of practice and stress and anxiety of being able to pretend to be that way; the habitual exhaustion from the effort of doing so; the depression and abysmal self-esteem from never, never understanding the people around you or being able to tell whether people actually like you or not. The years of teasing and abuse, the subsequent years of retrospectively realising all the other things which were teasing and abuse at the time but we couldn't tell at the time. The incessant Impostor's Syndrome, which only gets worse the higher you rise -- if you can move forward in your career. Who speak nineteen languages, but get scurvy because they forget to eat. No, seriously: people whose executive dysfunction requires the scheduling of bathing and eating, or else a rigid routine, where even slight interruptions can trigger a panic attack. The meltdowns and fear and frustration and despair.
And you don't see the ones who don't "seem fine". Who weren't as fortunate as those of us who got a series of lucky breaks and have been able to work around our disabilities and take advantage of our strengths. The ones who killed themselves in despair or ended up on the streets or were institutionalised or are housebound on antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds.
The DSMV changes to the Autism Spectrum diagnoses have been widely stated by the people writing them to be for the purpose of excluding people from being diagnosed on the spectrum. Because when people started actually looking at how many people had an ASD, it turns out to be much more than anyone thought.
Obviously it can't be because so many people were swept under the carpet for all those years, so it must be a problem with the definition. Hey, if we change the definition of Cancer to exclude any condition of the skin, that means that all those people with melanomas must be cured, right?
"This is a Hollywood movie: when it comes to the Laws of Physics, they're lucky if they get Gravity!" --- my wife
Think of it this way:
You go in to the clinic because your spouse is worried about your health.
You're 50 lbs overweight and your cholesterol and blood sugar are too high.
Do we have a separate diagnosis for the person who's 100 lbs overweight? Does it matter what the label is?
You should be paying attention to what the psychologist, psychiatrist, social worker, your family, and what you yourself identify as your particular constellation of problems.
The label is useless and explains nothing. You don't have Aspergers, or Autism, or Autism Spectrum Disorder, you have a constellation of social cognitive problems that represent part of who you have been. The causes are probably unknown and may be unique to you or your family, just like the causes of someone else "with Aspergers" are unknown and probably unique to them or their family.
Do you want a ruler with one line on it that says "long"?
I'm not saying these aren't real problems, I'm just saying any label is useless.
I say this as someone who has worked on the DSM. Ignore it. It's not what matters.
No, you work with a bunch of people who *think* they have Asperger's. if you sit through one of my son's 3 hour long meltdowns because he suddenly decided his shirt was the wrong color, you'd see the difference.