Why is autism classified as a childhood disorder?

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Maybe the thought is that early intervention is going to cure it (or "alleviate" it into insignificance)? I.e. that ABA (or whatever) will make adulthood accommodations uneccessary?

It is baffling.

As more kids who were diagnosed in their school years age into adulthood maybe more attention will be focused on adult autistic problems, for a change.

Why do you think he is autistic ?

It was a joke, because Peter Pan never grows up.

Did some research and it turns out that adult people with autism and ASD usually get the diagnosis schizoid personality disorder or schizotypal personality disorder or avoidant personality disorder (like me) and/or ADHD and/or OCD and/or panic disorder w/o agoraphobia. Which is quite a complicated way to describe something when you have a much simpler way to do this, methinks.

Oh, sorry. There are so many threads about people and characters who could have Autism that I did not realize it was a joke.

Fair enough TBH

I think part of the problem is that the DSM is not used exclusively as a guide for diagnosis by psychiatrists, but is too often used for policy-making decisions.

Therefore, people think that because a diagnosis is classified under diagnoses made in childhood, the general public assumes that it only effects children, based on where it is in a diagnostic manual.

Same thing goes with the reclassifications in the DSM-V. Because it is not always apparent, at the age when most children are diagnosed, how the autism spectrum disorder is going to manifest itself or what the expectations may be for later in life, psychiatrists may be better off giving them a blanket diagnosis of "Autism." However, as the child learns to communicate in various ways, it becomes more apparent what the learning differences are, and the distinctions between the different spectrum disorders can be really helpful for adults in helping them determine what their strengths and weaknesses are. Yet the result, I fear, will be government agencies making one-size-fits-all guidelines because of the new DSM category.

People with ADHD, as was mentioned before, face similar problems because not only is ADHD classed as "diagnosed at childhood" but also as a "behavioral" issue. Once again, this has more to do with diagnostics than etiology, and is classed this way because the first diagnostic criteria usually is based on behavior, but a lay person using the DSM, or an online article or wiki entry that regurgitates the DSM, will take that information and conclude that ADHD is primarily an issue of behavior, and once someone no longer behaves a certain way, they must no longer have it.

When it comes to my own diagnosis of Nonverbal Learning Disorder, this isn't even in DSM, either IV or V, because it is neuropsychologists, not psychiatrists, who first identified and who usually diagnose the condition, based on specific testing in addition to the behavioral observations that psychiatrists would use. Behavior issues with NLD are often because of comorbid anxiety and depression. I think it is a big mistake for the psychiatric community to ignore NLD (perhaps they're just tossing it in with all the other ASDs, or PDD-NOS) because treating the comorbid depression (and significantly higher suicide rates) is pointless without understanding the fundamental differences in how we perceive the world, and especially as it affects what medicines and/or therapy actually works.

Anyway, if the person the initial poster spoke to was one of the heads at the hospital, then that system is in a sorry state. If that was basically some mid-level desk jockey making that remark, it could help (although perhaps not in the goal of getting a support group there) to go over their head to change hospital policy in regards to neurodivergent conditions.

I think that we need to move away from using the DSM for anything other than what it was for- guidelines for initial diagnoses within a single medical specialty- not a be-all-end-all guide to all human variation.