Autism

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Should Autism criteria be changed, so that it includes Broad Autism Phenotype as well?




Because it is possible to have some form of Autism with social skills

No, because It's not a disability. Don't want to start the i'm more autistic than you debate. But being socailly awkward doesn't make you autistic autistic is a lot more than being socially awkward. Secondly what would it be called Autism Spectrum Disorder Level 0.

First of all, BAP doesn't necessarily refer to people who have "social skills."

The whole point of the BAP concept is that people who don't fit criteria for an autism diagnosis may have autistic traits.

Since BAP was specifically created to describe people who don't fit criteria for an autism diagnosis, there's absolutely no point in changing diagnostic autism criteria to include BAP. It would be like changing diagnostic criteria for cancer to include people who don't have cancer; the cancer diagnosis would become meaningless.

Like putting people who have benign tumors or cysts into the “cancer” category because they have some of the same symptoms (like a lump where it doesn’t belong), but they don’t actually have cancer and need either different treatment or no treatment (depending on whether it’s causing any harm or not).

I’m always torn on issues like this, because on the one hand, people should be able to get all the assistance they need (which usually requires a diagnosis), but on the other, a line has to be drawn somewhere or the diagnosis becomes pointless.

People whose BAP traits are serious enough should be able to get a diagnosis other than autism: Social Communication Disorder, Sensory Processing Disorder, Central Auditory Processing Disorder, Receptive/Expressive Language Impairment, etc. each encompass some but not all autism traits.

People who are BAP but have no clinically significant disability, past or present, shouldn't have a diagnosis.

No because BAP isn't autism, it's just traits.

Ah, I wasn’t familiar with most of those diagnoses - thank you for teaching me something today

In that case, then yes, BAP people who have significant trouble because of the symptoms they do have should qualify for diagnoses that fit their particular “problem areas.” I completely agree that people who are not impaired in any way by their symptoms should not get a diagnosis, it just becomes a meaningless label then.

Autism criteria will include Broad Autism Phenotype and even more.

Yes, many autistic people have social skills and should not be any more excluded from autism criteria.

There are some variations here (of a given person with a condition that has been or would be diagnosed in the affirmative by professionals, in this case we'll use ASD as an example).

1) diagnosed -> seeks help
2) diagnosed -> doesn't seek help
3) self-diagnosed -> seeks help -> assessment too expensive
4) self-diagnosed -> doesn't seek help
5) undiagnosed -> seeks help -> assessment too expensive
6) undiagnosed -> doesn't seek help

the definition is already so loose , anyone with issues will say they are a little on the spectrum. If your life isn’t impacted , you probably should stop trying to find a label to supplement public domain personality quirks.

Self-diagnosed and undiagnosed are in the same category.

Thank you