NPR Calls Asperger's Syndrome "Mental Illness"

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Sigh, the question of mind-body dualism is raised again. I wish the people who expressed over-the-top outrage would do a little research first.

If mental illness is taken to mean psychiatric disorder and psychiatric disorder is defined (albeit not exclusively) as any disorder defined in the DSM-IV-TR or Chapter V of the ICD-10, Asperger's syndrome is a mental illness. Some argue that AS is a neurological disorder instead, but of course schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, etc. all have neurological correlates. Since the mind is only an emergent property of neurological function anyway, the difference between psychiatry and neurology is mostly one of tradition; epileptic seizures, for example, were once treated under psychiatry, but now medicine considers it to be a neurological phenomenon.

The fact is that Asperger's syndrome affects externally observed behavior, subjective cognitive processes, and other aspects typically thought to be functions of the mind. Calling it a disorder, illness, or syndrome does imply value judgment; but I don't think we'd all be coming here to talk about the often negative effects AS has on our lives if it weren't at least a little disabling if only because it makes it harder to adapt to the social environment we are required to live in.