No More "Asperger's Syndrome" 602
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."
Re:Psychiatry, not geekdom (Score:5, Informative)
Because many of us have at least been accused of having it. Or are "self-diagnosed" as having it. Or were even diagnosed by an actual psychiatrist.
C'mon, idiots. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:About time (Score:5, Informative)
Re:About time (Score:5, Informative)
Well, not exactly, the DSM-5 at the same time removing the AS label relaxes the criteria of Autism Spectrum Disorder. Anyone who qualified for the criteria of Asperger's Syndrom qualifies for the DSM-5's criteria for proper autism. This is because there is little to no benefit at all in treating people with severe issues who have AS any differently from those with Autism. The only differentiator, really, between AS and classical Kanner's autism in the DSM-4 was a language delay, even if one had a language delay and coped better as an adult than someone who did not have one, that person would be diagnosed kanners and the one without the delay with aspergers. This caused as you can imagine a headache with regards to getting insurance or the state to cover any amount of therapy if you had the AS label even if you really needed it and your family wasn't in a position to reasonably afford it.
Re:Met them (Score:0, Informative)
but luckily, as a slashdot member, you're able to tell the difference between personal anecdotes and medical research, and wouldn't dream of trying to pass the former off as the latter. ... right?
Re:Damn... (Score:2, Informative)
It's not a disease.
You can label it however you like. It may or may not be a problem. How about "condition", which is a more neutral term?
We all have a condition. The condition may be "normal". If you're in a room full of people trying to outdo each other with stories of their quirks, being normal is a handicap. If you're in a room full of "normals" talking about reality TV and you try to change the topic to rare coins (your obsession) then being on the autistic spectrum or having "aspergers" is handicap.
It's not so much that you need to get rid of the condition as you may need to learn how to cope with it. Being left-handed isn't a "disease" either, but there are studies showing that people who are left-handed are more likely to have accidents. By identifying left-handedness as a condition and training lefties how to deal with it, we can help them. Ditto for "aspergers", "homosexuality" or any other condition that has been labeled as a disease over the years.
Maybe they should just get rid of the term "disease" and label everything as a "condition". Either that, or psychiatrists and pscychologists could actually think, which I suspect at least some of the do.
Sigh... it's like the Internet in real life: pointless semantic debates that don't really help anybody.
Re: Damn... (Score:2, Informative)
Disease eh? Sounds like most engineers I've worked with.
For the record, my 5 year old is extremely bright (a few years ahead of his peers). He behaves strangely. Needs to be cured? I don't think so... Taught how to socialize and learn not to space out so much? Yes... He's a typical aspergers from what I've been advised...
Re:Damn... (Score:2, Informative)
But it's culturally-defined what is and isn't normal
I'm just going to jump in here and yell "BULLSHIT!". Ever looked up the definition of normal? Aspergers is a significant deviation from how a person functions mentally on average. That's the definition of "not normal".
On the whole "disease/not-disease" front I would point out that it is a disorder and not a disease. Also disease does not imply not-normal. It is quite normal to get the common cold in certain months of the year.
There are situations where being a sociopath are an advantage. There are (controversial) theories that suggest that schizophrenics were treated as shaman in hunter-gatherer societies. And obviously, we can't forget the DSM's classification of homosexuality as a disease.
What a nice load of pathos. All irrelevant to the topic.
Re:sick and tired of labels (Score:5, Informative)
So when does life start?
That depends on how you define life. I define it as "a self-sustaining biological unit suitably equipped to survive in its nominal environment". Humans are not adapted to survive when immersed in amniotic fluid, and when they are immersed in it they aren't a self-sustaining biological unit. Your definition may be "any functioning cells", but that includes a leaf just fallen from a tree, a heart in an organ transport cooler, or the leg of a cat that's just been run over and otherwise reduced to pulp, and that's clearly way too broad.
Life OBVIOUSLY starts at conception.
Not obvious at all. At conception all you have is a single cell, and while there are single celled organisms, this cell isn't capable of surviving on it's own. It's just a free-drifting cell which will cease to function if it doesn't implant itself in the uterus wall within a matter of days, so at this stage it's biological but about as much "life" as a blood cell or a transplant organ.
Once it implants itself it relies 100% on the host (or mother if you prefer) for nutrition, oxygen, etc. This is also true of a kidney. Again, both are biological, but neither are independently self-sustaining biological units. Still not life by my definition, but life by the cat's leg standard.
After some months the internal organs develop to a point where it can survive outside the womb with varying degrees of artificial assistance. This could be considered life, but lacking the intervention it's not viable life, it will quickly die or suffer serious permanent damage in the event of a power outage, a faulty humidicrib, or even spontaneous organ failure due to stress.
Full term baby: definitely life. It breathes without assistance, it maintains it's own body temperature (not perfectly, true), its skin is suited to exposure to air...IOW, it is fully adapted to function as a biological unit in its nominal environment.
So unless you introduce unprovable religious concepts like a soul or use an effectively meaningless definition of life, it is by no means certain that life begins at conception.
Can you get life without conception?
Of course you can. Bacteria do just fine without it, and there are lots of higher species that can reproduce by parthenogenesis or other asexual means [dailymail.co.uk]. And if you're prepared to accept artificially supported life as life, I don't see why artificial cloning doesn't count.
Oh that's right, life starts AFTER the baby leaves the womb and not before.
Well, yes. Until that point it's only potential life, and sometimes confusing potential life with actual life can have dire consequences [guardian.co.uk]. HAND.
Re:Damn... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Damn... (Score:5, Informative)
>Diseases are not the only thing that can be cured. Ham, for instance.
Sorry, but the Amiga's most famous graphics mode was congenitally-screwed the moment the company's management forced Jay Miner to go back and make it RGB-based instead of hue-saturation-luminosity based. In retrospect, though, it was mostly just ahead of its time. If I could go back in time 20 years, I'd NOW implement a HAM game by rendering to a phantom 16-bit playfield (using the top bit or few to flag 'dirty' bitmap areas that changed), then use something like the painter algorithm to re-render chunks of it that virtual bitmap to (sliced?)HAM in semi-realtime.
It wouldn't have worked on anything less than an A3000 with at least 2 megs, and would have probably had a real update rate of around .25 to 2fps (not counting sprites), but DAMN, it would have had some killer screenshots in AmigaWorld and sold a few thousand copies before anybody realized the underlying game itself either sucked or was only cool due to the graphics (kind of like the UFO game that was basically a HAM background with sprites animated over it that that sold lots of copies despite sucking as a game, just because it was a game that used HAM).
At the risk of being serious . . . (Score:4, Informative)
FWIW:
Only the name "Asperger's Syndrome" has been dropped. The collective set of symptoms and diagnostic criteria are in the DSM and there is no danger of the diagnosis disappearing. Just don't label it "Asperger's".
Apparently in some parts of the world (eg US) health insurers don't provide support because the word "Autism" is not in the name. If the label doesn't say autism then I guess it ain't autism. Go figure.
IMHO this is a particularly bad summary description.