Boo! Aspergers is being delisted.

I used to be an Aspie.
Now I'm on the autism spectrum.

Bring back Aspergers!

Well aspergers was already an autism spectrum disorder....apparently I have Developmental Disorder NOS but I also have a document stating I have Aspergers Syndrome. I don't know I think the way they have it in the DSM makes sense.

I still have Asperger's because we use the ICD. They first claimed they were going to keep Asperger's because they were accused of always following the DSM. Comes out they are indeed going to follow again. I don't even get why they bother with that manual when they have no thought behind it.

So when the new ICD comes out I will no longer have Asperger's. People who say but it was always under autism anyway, don't get it. There is absolutely no way I'm going to say I'm autistic. If I did, people would look at me strange.

But then again I didn't agree with the old manual either. I feel it misunderstands autism and also misses out on important things. At least DSM 5 takes in count sensory input problems but groups it under restricted pattern of behavior. Seriously?

I don't think people are going to give up Asperger's so easily. Despite what the manuals say.

So aspergers isn't gonna be on the spectrum anymore??

It will still be on the spectrum, but now it wont be called Asperger's. We'll all just get lumped in as having 'autism'. Personally, I will never describe myself as being autistic. To me, they are two very different things even if they are both a part of the same spectrum.

Really it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Red and yellow are both part of the same spectrum, but you'd never just lump them all in together and call them 'colours', you'd refer to them as red and yellow, because they are different colours.

I was told there was no doubt I have aspergers but may not meet the requirements for ASD. Still waiting for the final report.

The odd thing is that in many cases they will just ship over the aspies to the new diagnosis whether they fit or not, because most think it is way to much effort to have them retested.

So they plan to start over with those who are not yet diagnosed, meaning someone might be grandfathered into the new DX while someone with more issues might be denied a diagnosis.

The really odd thing is that those with atypical autism will have no place at all in this. When you have a severity scale where you have to match several issues equally, even those with just a vague atypy will also be affected. This assumes you are equally affected on every aspect of autism and that is not what I see in real life.

Now DSM has just two groups and I would probably score mild in both. But when I look at my problem areas I'm deeply affected in areas where people with much worse social skills do better than me.

The thinking behind taking away Asperger's was this; We cannot really see a difference between AS and HFA. Therefore we cannot make AS into its own thing, there are not enough evidence AS and HFA are different things. The obvious solution to this is... bring HFA into AS. If they are the same.... yea why not? But then they go.. they are not the same so we cannot. And I think, hey you just said they were the same?

Man.

Also it was confusing that the more severe form of autism was called autism. It's not especially smart to have it set up that way. It has been referred to as Kanner autism. So why not make it simple and use AS for high functioning autism and Kanner syndrome for low functioning autism? But nope....

I do like that the main name is autism spectrum and not just autism. That's where they did right. The rest.. hmm...

I have done a lot of projects and writing on pervasive developmental disorders.
There are some differences between HFA and Aspergers, but only if the people diagnosed are diagnosed with consistent and like systems.

One of the biggest things I did was a literature review [almost fifty articles, some of which were actually literature reviews], which assessed development and behavioral, emotional, and neurocognitive presentation of PDDNOS, HFA and Asperger's.

When you account for and only deal with equal diagnostic processes, differences become evident.

But then everyone would actually have to develop more valid and reliable diagnostic procedures and OMG CAN'T HAVE THAT.

Also, the DSM will probably be irrelevant in fifteen-twenty years [I mean as a whole, not just this edition] if the RDoC [Research Domain Criteria- NIMH] ends up being as successful and practical as it could be.

And it will likely eventually end up way more legitimately useful and informative in use than the DSM ever really was.

I see what you're saying there.

I mean, DSM at the time was a great tool because it was free of causality theories and that was really needed at a time Freudianism was out there. But since then we have moved on and DSM has done what it could, now it's rather a liability. With newer diagnostic tools we can and will be able to see things more clearly.

Too bad DSM can't be gone TODAY.

The main use of DSM is for insurance companies to decide what treatments to pay for.

That's not the whole truth. It is used for that in USA, BUT it is used in a huge part of the world, in teaching situations and for our Euro doctors for diagnosis. Where I live we have socialized med so it doesn't matter much about insurance companies because so few are uninsured. Most are only universally insured.

We diagnose according to DSM, then the diagnosis is translated into ICD code. That is because ICD is not detailed at all and very hard to use as a manual.

DSM seems to have gotten into our thinking. I have seen several forums (members) using DSM as if it was THE truth and whatever anyone says, the DSM is right because it always has the last say for some reason.

This site is basically built on the older version of DSM.

When people google if they wonder if they have something, they turn to DSM definitions.

It has become a huge influence.

Can you explain that mechanism further?

An insurance company is a bureaucracy. It is not capable of diagnosing patients. All it knows is paperwork. But if doctors and therapists all use a common diagnostic standard, then the insurance company can put every customer in a box.

Then when your doctor diagnoses you with X and prescribes treatment Y, the insurance company can look up X and Y and tell that your policy doesn't cover it. Another job well done.

Without the DSM, there would be no way to know what your policy does not cover.

That's an interesting notion, but a lot of treatments- covered by insurance or not- are not referenced specifically in the DSM. The original intention of the DSM was to aid in diagnosis. I ideally, when there are specific diagnoses they are grouped according to symptoms and response to attempted treatment, as well as etiology.

Classification aids in treatment.
The insurance companies used diagnostic codes, yes... but there are also the diagnostic codes in the ICD10, for example that actually address all areas of health.

The purpose is not insurance, but aid in treatment, large scale management and documentation. The ICD is used in countries where "insurance" is either very different from places like the United States or it pretty much doesn't even function in a way that it can be considered for the majority of individuals.

The purpose of the DSM was never insurance.
Insurance takes advantage of diagnostic codes to make logic/decision trees based on fairly current research- little of which was actually implemented in the latest DSM.

The RDoC, with any luck, will also be considered legitimate by insurance as a system to diagnose. But its purpose is not to aid insurance or medical billing.

The DSM changed last May so the term aspergers has been out dated for awhile. I was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, but the neuropsychologist said that technically I have high functioning autism.

I don't know exactly what the DSM covers, but when I was diagnosed it was partly via a 'RAADS-R' test, on which I scored 204. According to the psychiatrist who carried out the test, that was "one of the highest scores" she had ever seen. I live in Scotland, so I don't know if we use something slightly different to some of the other countries in the EU.

Actually, I just had a quick search for some information and apparently this is unlikely to affect countries in the UK because we tend to use the WHO's ICD instead of the DSM, which is only more commonly used in America. This explains why I was diagnosed with 'Aspergers' after the updated DSM release in May 2013.

I don't know about the RAADS-R [the second R stands for revised], but I was under the impression that the RAADS was based on much of the diagnostic criteria and description in the previous DSM?

Which is confusing, because I didn't think that Scotland really used the DSM.

What the heck do I know, though?
The DSM is released kind of... "when the APA feels like it" an at this point the development of it is often so bizarre and the information it is based on so convoluted at times, that it's no wonder everyone's head still spins even five years after a new edition.

Some research still references diagnostic criteria from DSMIII- it is research from several years ago, but the problem is that when others are writing articles or using past research as reference, they are then using outdated studies with outdated criteria.

Frankly, the majority of the diagnostic "system", in the west at least, is a freaking mess.

[yeah, I totally just said that haha]

And in the East?

Yeah, I didn't think we did either, I guess we pick and choose what parts of it to use and what parts to ignore based on either WHO's recommendations or our own. I don't know haha.

All I know is that after the assessment, I received a letter to let me know I "meet the diagnostic criteria for Asperger's Syndrome" and that she would inform both my GP and my PDoc of her diagnosis for their records.

I mean "the west" as in the contries considered to be culturally "western oriented".

I couldn't tell you what I think about other parts of the world; I am not nearly as familiar with other systems as I am with the DSM, so have no real opinion on them.