[sneschalmers]

Does having Aspergers mean I'm autistic? And if I'm autistic would that mean I have autism? Or just Aspergers?

[Callista]

Asperger's is a kind of autism, but not all autism is Asperger's.

Kind of the way an orange is a kind of fruit, but not all fruit are oranges.

Asperger's is basically what they call autism without a speech delay or developmental delay. It's categorized separately because it was first described by a guy named Hans Asperger; but his work was lost for a good while. Separately, a fellow named Kanner also described autism for the first time (using, ironically, cases of which some could be called Asperger's today); and his was the definition people used until Asperger's work was rediscovered by Lorna Wing, who popularized Asperger's as a concept in the 1980s. By then, "autism" proper had speech delay as an intrinsic feature, so they were named separate diagnoses.

Forward to the 1990s and a new DSM edition. Asperger's is now entered into the DSM as a "pervasive developmental disorder", which is the new name for the entire autism spectrum, and autism in general becomes much more popular as a diagnosis as it is found in people previously thought to be (or only to be) mentally retarded. Asperger's also becomes more well-known, and it expands the spectrum to people whose major problems are with repetitive movement, constricted interests, and social interaction, rather than speech. With this very broad spectrum, autism is now known to be very common.

Enter "PDD-NOS", the diagnosis for people who are on the autism spectrum but don't fit either Asperger's or regular autism. It is currently the single largest category for autism, and includes people with very diverse features. "NOS" is the name for "not otherwise specified"--when they can't find a diagnostic category--and it's supposed to be a small minority, pointing to the inadequacy of the current criteria. As if that weren't bad enough, lately it's become obvious that Asperger's and the rest of autism aren't different enough to put them in separate categories (Asperger's speech is often highly unusual, and regular autism is often indistinguishable from Asperger's in adulthood), so they're thinking about just merging the entire autism spectrum and calling it an "autistic spectrum disorder" in general.

So... My recommendation is just to consider Asperger's as a vague patch somewhere on the autism spectrum. It's not a really well-defined group, and is probably not a distinct condition; but it has definitely served its purpose to teach us that autistic people can be highly verbal and do not have to have developmental delay.

[sneschalmers]

I still don't understand. Are people with Aspergers autistic or not?

[shichi]

Yes, people with Asperger's are autistic.

As Callista said, Asperger's is a name for a variant of autism where there's no speech or developmental delay.

Basically, autism is a spectrum disorder - hence the term Autistic Spectrum Disorder. Asperger's is on the milder end of the spectrum. However, not everyone who's autistic have Asperger's.

Anyways, all this confusion regarding names are going to be removed soon because Asperger's is going to be thrown out the books and everyone is going to be labelled under "Autistic Spectrum Disorder".

[Perna]

Yes, as shichi says, it's an Autism Spectrum disorder or, Pervasive Developmental Disorder:

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topic...rs/index.shtml

[sane1logic1]

Plenty of people with Asperger's had/have some developmental delay.

And it isn't a disorder.

It's a syndrome or condition.

Donna Williams is a good authority on the subject from first hand experience, so is Wendy Lawson, they both have good web sites and have published books on the subject.

[Callista]

I have to disagree here; people diagnosed with Asperger's who have developmental delay are misdiagnosed, because the diagnostic criteria specifically exclude people with developmental delay from the AS diagnosis.

However, I do disagree with this exclusion, because it's plain to me that having developmental delay shouldn't automatically mean you should be diagnosed with PDD-NOS or autistic disorder instead of Asperger's. Someone with all the traits of Asperger's (autistic with no speech delay beyond what would be expected due to a general developmental delay) should be diagnosed with Asperger's whatever his IQ happens to be. But then, as Shichi mentions, all of that should be irrelevant once they merge the spectrum, which I think will be good because the diagnostic categories as they are aren't actually very useful to doctors, whereas "autism" tells them all that a label can tell you about such a diverse disorder.

And, yeah, it is a "disorder". Disorder is just a name for something that causes impairment, and autism does that. It often gives you unusual skills in some area or another, too; but it can't be diagnosed without that impairment.

The words I do object to, though, are "disease" or "illness", because those are false. Both imply that the condition is something out of balance, away from health, and that the goal is to return to the norm; but that's not the case. Autistic brains develop differently, but they are healthy; and the goal with autism isn't to return to some norm that was never there to begin with, but to learn skills and coping strategies to deal with the mismatch between your neurology and the way the world is structured.

[shichi]

Offtopic: Love Donna Williams. I read her first book as a teenager and it was a lightbulb moment in my life, as though I'd found someone who had similar experiences to me.

Ontopic: I agree that autism is an impairment. A difference, yes, but also an impairment nonetheless. At least that's been my experience.

[Callista]

Yep. Being an impairment doesn't make it intrinsically bad, though. Disability isn't something horrible; it just means you have to work around some weakness, whatever it happens to be. The only thing that makes a disability is that society isn't set up to work with your particular skill set; it's a gap between what you can do and whatever your society expects of the average person.

For example, if everyone were telepathic, then you would be disabled if you weren't; and you'd have to get accommodations that involved different methods of communication; for example, e-mail might be considered adaptive technology in that kind of a world. In our world, it's not a disability not to be telepathic, because nobody is and our society doesn't expect it of anyone.

So disability isn't really something that describes one person; it's more a state created by the combination of someone's skill set and the resources provided by their society. In an illiterate society, a dyslexic person isn't disabled; in a world where everyone can memorize entire books savant-style, the average person in our world would be disabled because he's got to study something to memorize it. That's what they call the "social model" of disability, and I think it's the most relevant one to everyday life.

[sane1logic1]

The term 'disorder' has been seen to be hijacked as an organisational tool to discriminate against people with differences and I have no truck with that, whoever does have truck with it is their affair,

I am not disordered as to my being.

[Callista]

I'd rather say "disordered and frigging proud of it", than let them use my diagnosis as a pejorative. What are we--afraid of a word?