New Definition of Autism May Exclude Many, Study Suggests.

[elleng]

'Proposed changes in the definition of autism would sharply reduce the skyrocketing rate at which the disorder is diagnosed and may make it harder for many people who would no longer meet the criteria to get health, educational and social services, a new analysis suggests.

The definition is under review by an expert panel appointed by the American Psychiatric Association, which is completing work on the fifth edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The D.S.M, as the manual is known, is the standard reference for mental disorders, driving research, treatment and insurance decisions.

The study results, presented on Thursday at a meeting of the Icelandic Medical Association, are still preliminary, but they offer the latest and most dramatic estimate of how tightening the criteria for autism could affect the rate of diagnosis.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/health/research/new-autism-definition-would-exclude-many-study-suggests.html?hp

[KamaAina]

1. The Icelandic Medical Association?!

Were they able to fit everybody into the phone booth?

Strange they should pick such an isolated locale for this announcement. Could it be the geographic equivalent of the famed Friday news dump? Sounds to me like they're trying to define a lot of people out of disability, as happened to me when I started reading above grade level in an age when "autistic" implied "mentally retarded".

The proposed DSM-V would also eliminate Asperger syndrome as a separate category. A lot of people on the spectrum who identify as "Aspies" are horrified that they might now be lumped in with "those people" who flap their hands, don't speak, and so forth. Ouch.

Actually this study sounds somewhat similar to the one on which I assisted Dr. Volkmar back in the early '90s, that established the validity of Asperger's in the first place.

[GreenPartyVoter]

4. I have an Aspie-like son. Never formally diagnosed, but healthcare

providers frequently suggested that he was very similar.

I'm a little unclear, here, as to the changes. Are they dispensing with the tag of Asperger's altogether, and just calling everyone on the spectrum autistic? I don't see how that would be of much use, because then the diagnosis of autistic would be utterly imprecise.

I'm bipolar, but officially I am BP2, which is distinguished from BP1 and other mood disorders on the spectrum by a certain set of criteria. To start calling all of us on the spectrum just "bipolar" would not only be useless it would be dangerous, because certain meds can be used for one type but not another, for instance. (I realize this isn't quite the same as the proposed changes with "autistic" but it's the closest I can make sense of things based on my own experience.)

[KamaAina]

5. Actually, no.

They're creating a whole new category called "social communication disorder", which would be no guarantee of any services. Also, it probably means I should cancel my Facebook account.

[GreenPartyVoter]

6. Well I think it stinks that they are setting things up that way. Going to be an awful lot

of people hurt by that.

[applegrove]

2. That is just sick!

[Demeter]

3. I read this with horror, and disbelief

With a 28 year old daughter diagnosed PDD-NOS, I can assure the experts that she is. like most of her class, grossly disabled, as in will never live independently, has multiple physical health issues due to her genetic programming as well as the neurological ones, and that defining a condition out of existence is the biggest cynical violation of the Hippocratic Oath that I've ever heard of.