End of the use of the name Aspergers

[zurb]

call it something else.

Spockers Syndrome?
Sheldonism?
Attwooders?

 

[Slithytoves]

Spockers Syndrome?
Sheldonism?
Attwooders?

Ha! Love "Attwooders"! It's not a big leap from "Aspie" or "Autie" to "Attie".

How about Dinosaur Syndrome, as it appears we've suffered a sudden mass-extinction event?

 

[yay_I_AM_ASD123]

Why are you feeling angry?

autism meltdown.
plus I had to get Steroids from the doctor to increase my growth, I'm turning 17 and not growing. I take two tablets of Testosterone and some other strange name of a Steroid for 3 more weeks. it makes me feel good.

 

[Slithytoves]

autism meltdown.
plus I had to get Steroids from the doctor to increase my growth, I'm turning 17 and not growing. I take two tablets of Testosterone and some other strange name of a Steroid for 3 more weeks. it makes me feel good.

I'm sorry to hear you're in meltdown. Maybe doing something physical (not destructive) to vent your frustration would help?

I'm glad you're getting help to get your growth on track. Steroids can be rough on your body though, not to mention your mind. No wonder you're feeling charged up! If anyone at home has noticed that you seem a little overexcited, you may want to let your doctor know the steroids may be working a little too well. I'm sure it feels good, but it may cause you some unintended trouble if you can't come down from an elevated mood.

If it helps, I would have guessed you were older than 17 by your photo.

 

[yay_I_AM_ASD123]

I'm sorry to hear you're in meltdown. Maybe doing something physical (not destructive) to vent your frustration would help?

I'm glad you're getting help to get your growth on track. Steroids can be rough on your body though, not to mention your mind. No wonder you're feeling charged up! If anyone at home has noticed that you seem a little overexcited, you may want to let your doctor know the steroids may be working a little too well. I'm sure it feels good, but it may cause you some unintended trouble if you can't come down from an elevated mood.

If it helps, I would have guessed you were older than 17 by your photo.

wow nice, thank you.
you guys are awesome. not sure why its called autism. more like your more in touch with people person. lots of you guys with really good understanding,love and care.

nice.


thank you for your kind words sir. you sir are a true human and gentleman.

 

[James K Trefethen]

A few people have asked how many people will no longer have a diagnosis after Asperger's got merged into "the spectrum." The short answer is that we will never know. If you are getting treatment in the US for autism, you must have a diagnosis- so everybody who had Asperger's is now "on the spectrum." If you don't get help, you don't need a diagnosis.

 

[zurb]

Tony Attwood on the difference between HFA and ASD.

 

[zurb]

If you don't get help, you don't need a diagnosis.

For most adults there is no help anyway. There are other perfectly resonable reasons for seeking diagnosis.

 

[James K Trefethen]

True, very true. Other valid reasons for a diagnosis do exist, but you only NEED one if you are getting help.

I submit the numerous persons on Aspiecentral.com who do not have a professional diagnosis.

 

[Spiller]

The UK government forces the NHS and Benefits Agencies to shuffle their numbers into new lists so it looks like medical treatment waiting times are shorter and fewer people are claiming benefits for any reason.
Then they find a scape-goat to account for people having to wait just as long or claim just as much benefit.. at the moment the excuse is immigration..
That way the tax payer is fooled into believing that the current government is doing a good job and will hopefully vote for them next election.
At the moment I'm a self-diagnosed, post burn-out, high functioning Aspergers sufferer, claiming disability benefit (I ran.. and lost.. my own business 18 months ago). At some point soon I hope to become officially diagnosed so I can get access to an Aspergers-experienced/trained councellor, get myself sorted, then start my own charity helping people with physical/mental disabilities.
If I miss an AS/ASD diagnosis I may be stuck on benefits for a very long time.
If I miss the disability benefits criteria I may end up trying to work and burning-out again.
Whatever you have, whatever you think you have, you have a problem. The government/medical institution just moving the goal posts doesn't make stuff go away, it just leaves it for the next government to deal with..
This isn't about us, it's about government justifying it's spending to stay in power.. just my opinion
.. Not ranting, or anything

 

[AdamR]

My problem with the new system is that everybody is somewhere "on the spectrum." That include NTs. They are just on the other side of "the spectrum." Merging HFA and Asperger's together may have been the right thing to do but coming up with this spectrum thing.... It makes me think of rainbows, leperchauns, and fantastical pots of gold. What in the world were they thinking? We have something now everybody else has, too?

In the social sciences, spectra are more often all-inclusive, as they are for gender, sexuality, or class. Not so with most spectra in psychiatry. Those generally pertain to a specific population with a defined range of characteristics. I've never seen any version of the Autism spectrum on which NTs appear. It's a spectrum of Autism.

I prefer the word "continuum" myself, rather than "spectrum"--though as an NT, my preference is moot.

Changing the name of a disorder does not eliminate the symptoms

My concern is that it obscures, confuses, and conflates them.

I still am furious with anyone being described as "high functioning" on the scale. What do we call the people on the extreme low end? Stating that someone is high suggests that others are low, or lower. There has to be a better word to use if Asperger Syndrome must be discarded.

Like what, though? I agree that the terms "high" and "low" have latent practical and psychological ramifications, but really, they are accurate. It does aggravate the problem once you start lumping discrete disorders together, though. People who would have been considered high-functioning before may now find themselves fair to middlin' since other groups have been added to the mix.

I tend to agree with Slithytoves' assessment, that the change comes down to the economics of exclusion. Not to mention that tightening the criteria and blaming doctors for being too liberal in their judgements takes the pressure off finding a genuine explanation for the recent explosion in ASD prevalence.

 

[fredvizsla]

I don't agree that Asperger's is on any spectrum. I use Asperger to be specific in speaking to people who share personality and perceptual characteristics like myself. I don't think much of what psychiatrists and psychologists have to say; they don't understand who we are. I'm moving toward using a whole new word to "name" us: Farouche. Look it up!

my blog is: aspergerhuman.wordpress.com

 

[zurb]

... finding a genuine explanation for the recent explosion in ASD prevalence.

Two genuine reasons:
1) The term has only been used in the West for a very short time. Most adults now self diagnosing or diagnosed as adults would never have been diagnosed as a child as the term was unknown.
2) The western world is significantly less aspie friendly than it was 40 years ago. The extra stress makes it harder to pretend to be NT and brings more of us out of the woodwork.

Its not that there is an 'explosion' or any more than there were in the past. We are just more visible!

 

[zurb]

I've never seen any version of the Autism spectrum on which NTs appear. It's a spectrum of Autism.

I prefer the word "continuum" myself, rather than "spectrum"--though as an NT, my preference is moot. :

There is one theory that Aspergers is just the 'extreme male mind'. That does put everyone including 'NTs' on the continuum.

I don't see a huge difference between spectrum and continuum. Maybe the difference is that a spectrum is a continuum split into its constituent parts?

 

[AdamR]

Two genuine reasons:
1) The term has only been used in the West for a very short time. Most adults now self diagnosing or diagnosed as adults would never have been diagnosed as a child as the term was unknown.
2) The western world is significantly less aspie friendly than it was 40 years ago. The extra stress makes it harder to pretend to be NT and brings more of us out of the woodwork.

Its not that there is an 'explosion' or any more than there were in the past. We are just more visible!

Good points, all. To your second suggestion, I was thinking that the powers that be would rather not acknowledge those stressors to which our institutions contribute.

I would say, though, that most of the aforementioned "explosion", as I've read of it, has occurred among young children. Your points apply very well to adults, but less to the little ones. Some of the surge may simply be about increased awareness, among both the medical profession and the public. But there is also a bit of a question if there might be environmental factors in play. Remember the fuss not too long ago about phthalates, a class of chemicals used in plastics, which studies suggested may cause a certain feminisation of young males, and increased incidence of hypospadias? I never rule out the possibility that a toxin may be affecting things in utero. I've read too much of successful environmental justice suits. If some sort of man-made substance was proven to be a factor in the appearance of Autism, governments would be called upon to take action, putting them at odds with industries they're in bed with.

There is one theory that Aspergers is just the 'extreme male mind'. That does put everyone including 'NTs' on the continuum.

I don't see a huge difference between spectrum and continuum. Maybe the difference is that a spectrum is a continuum split into its constituent parts?

Simon Baron-Cohen, yes. That theory has actually been a big topic in my household, of late. I was referring more to what medical practitioners are going by, though. Those scales are generally based on metadata, not a single theory.

There isn't really much of a difference between a spectrum and a continuum, as you say. I just like "continuum" for the reasons James mentioned--it doesn't lend itself to rainbows.

 

[Spiller]

I prefer the word "continuum" myself, rather than "spectrum"--though as an NT, my preference is moot.

To me, 'Continuum' denotes a more realistic multidimentional aspect, where 'Spectrum' indicates a 2D line.. you're 'here, so NT', or 'there, so LFA', or somewhere in between, HFA/AS, whatever..
My mental model is more of a 3D series of Venn Spheres, each a trait in itself, each with depth, flavour, color.. each overlapping and sharing.. I like that!
That puts you in there somewhere, Adam

 

[Slithytoves]

One thing that seems a little confusing, and perhaps confused, in some of our discussions is what was actually meant by the "Autism Spectrum". Many of us know what it meant, but for those who don't, all the term referred to was an array of disorders that were considered related under the general heading of Autism: Autistic Disorder, Asperger's Disorder/Syndrome, Childhood Disintegrative Disorder, and PDD-NOS (Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified). Until the DSM-V, the spectrum was in no way a measure of severity. Severity of presentation for each disorder on the spectrum was evaluated by the individual practitioner. There were tools to aid this, but they weren't very sharp.

What has happened with the consolidation into a single "Autism Spectrum Disorder", singular, is supposed to be as wyverary said, a "move towards catering to individual needs", by taking a multidimensional approach that does focus more on severity, so individual needs can presumably be addressed more consistently across medical professionals. The thinking was that it was better to fold all of the disorders into one diagnostic category to assist this new approach, because the symptoms of each disorder bore a number of similarities and had many of the same concomitant features anyway.

The reason why I grumbled that it was counterintuitive to combine the disorders, if the point was to better attend to individual needs, was because the resulting list of criteria are narrower than they were for Asperger's by itself. This fact likely will, as the paper I cited in my first post suggests, leave a significant number of people already and yet-to-be diagnosed with Asperger's out in the cold, effectively disenfranchised from their condition.

I'm all for making the Autism Spectrum into a truly multidimensional entity like the "continuum" as Spiller describes it, including scales of severity for each disorder. What I'm against is abandoning the original distinctions and nomenclature because it (1.) does threaten the status of many Aspies, (2.) takes away the unique identity of each group, who do have their own individual qualities despite some major shared ones, (3.) has implications for future research.

I know the DSM is all about diagnostics and coding, but there is also a grave social consideration that should not be underestimated for an array of disorders hallmarked by social awkwardness. In my view, messing with the identity of a group that is already alienated from much of society is a mistake, period. A lot of us here are proud to be Aspies or Auties, etc., and don't like the groups being confused (Just ask our friend Nitro, just for one example). I, for one, do not identify as "Autistic". That title doesn't resonate with me at all. I may have only just been diagnosed, after the change of the DSM classification, but I feel like I've lost part of my new identity before I could even try it on properly. As my doctor said, I don't fit the DSM-V criteria for Autism Spectrum Disorder, but I do fit the DSM-IV criteria for Asperger's. I'm lucky she diagnosed me anyway. It's changed my life in a matter of days. So what happens to people who are just like me, but don't see the right doctor? I'll tell you what happens: They will be considered NT, when they aren't. That, to me, is what Hell looks like.

(Edited for clarity of a statement.)

 

[Slithytoves]

For most adults there is no help anyway. There are other perfectly resonable reasons for seeking diagnosis.

True, very true. Other valid reasons for a diagnosis do exist, but you only NEED one if you are getting help.

I submit the numerous persons on Aspiecentral.com who do not have a professional diagnosis.

I personally think "need" is relative. There are people on AC who aren't suffering any for lack of help, but genuinely feel they "need" a diagnosis for peace of mind. A lot of people on AC who do not have a diagnosis don't want one for personal reasons, or can't get one (even if they do need help) for a variety of others. The undiagnosed are a very diverse group.

 

[Keith]

Remember how "demented", "gay", and "retarded" used to mean "really stupid"? I think people are starting to use "autist" for that purpose.

 

[Spiller]

Remember how "demented", "gay", and "retarded" used to mean "really stupid"? I think people are starting to use "autist" for that purpose.

Agreed, though I remember being called Autistic as a form of insult when I was at school, back in the age of dinosaurs Kids never seem to come up with original stuff.. still the same jokes and insults going round and round..