We should keep the separate Asperger's category

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05 Mar 2010, 4:41 am

I am more afraid for the PDD-NOS category.
If they do not meet the new criteria they do not have anything and even if they do have problems they will not be recognized.

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05 Mar 2010, 4:49 am

i agree. As people have contributed greatly to intellectual fields and are a lot like NT's except for social retardation and certain idiosyncracies. We can think rationally - in fact we can be more rational than NT's. Just put into your mind the image of the weird professor who is really a nice guy. To associate us with those who cannot read or write normally may mislead others into underestimating our IQ.

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05 Mar 2010, 5:43 am

Locustman wrote:

League_Girl wrote:

Just don't tell them of your DX. Problem solved.

So what happens when you can't do the job properly due the difficulties in multi-tasking, precessing information carrying out cognitive tasks that inevitably befall Aspies? No allowances will be made for your condition and you'll get the sack.

I agree we should keep the separate Asperger's diagnosis, if for no other reason that I believe it is being abolished purely as a cost-cutting exercise to prevent health trusts from having to give diagnostic referrals to aspies at all. This will lead to a higher rate of unemployment due to aspies being undiagnosed and therefore unable to access any of the specialist services they need in order to help them find, and maintain, work.

I also agree that, whether rightly or wrongly, autism is often associated with being ret*d and I don't want that stigma.

I left my office clerk thinking I didn't use my common sense and I didn't listen. I did tell him I wasn't good at reading between the lines and when people move things, I am not going to know where to find them, I need things to be direct because I don't connect the dots well. He didn't listen. I also told him I don't have a savant memory and I need reminders to do things or I could forget. I'm surprised I never got fired.

I have a problem with being told to do things when I am in the middle of something or else I forget if I don't do it now. Sometimes I would forget about my task so I wouldn't even go back to it. I would forget I was doing that task because I got caught up in other things I was told to do. I felt stupid and felt like I was on weed or something.

I never told anyone of my DX there.

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05 Mar 2010, 6:03 am

Quote:

I couldn't care less what this disorder is called. I've been diagnosed and I've received help for it.
And this whole thing about people not getting hired after the name change - it's happening now! It has taken me seven years to find work since I turned 18.

It is already happening now but why make it worse? What you should be doing is fighting against a big brother type of government where your medical and psychological history is easily disclosed. If I were in your position, I would either reverse the dx or protest against your rights being violated. No employer should have the supposed "right" to know. I'm glad America has the constitution unlike other nations around the world. A big brother society leads to great evil.

Last edited by timeisdead on 05 Mar 2010, 6:24 am, edited 1 time in total.

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05 Mar 2010, 6:11 am

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Why? They can as easily rethink their notions of intelligence. I think many neurotypicals would be more than happy to redefine "intelligence" to include the nonverbal social skills that they have and we lack, and would have no problem with redefining mathemeticians and engineers as "idiots savants" rather than "intelligent". Such a redefinition is in their interests, as it gives them more power.

Unfortunately, they are already starting to do so. Some people are very naive regarding life's realities. We need to fight against this with all of our power, not reconfirm their idiotic notions.

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05 Mar 2010, 6:21 am

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Nonsense. You think people are going to conclude that droves of mathematicians and engineers are mentally impaired? Once obviously intelligent people are labellled autistic, people will have to rethink their notions of autism.

People are beginning to look at intelligence in a more "hollistic" way (not all but a growing number). This means that if someone has social deficits, there are ignorant people out there that would automatically misclassify that person as non-intelligent. This can occur even if that person is brilliant in a variety of subjects (as people mistakenly assume if you do well or poorly in one area, you must do similarly in dissimilar areas). When the DSM is modified,, more will redefine the word's meaning. Similarly the phrases "mentally impaired" or "mentally challeneged" will take on new meaning. A change in the DSM will only facilitate that, leading to a greater amount of discrimination. Unfortunate aspies may find themselves fighting unjust regulations imposed by the state.

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05 Mar 2010, 6:24 am

timeisdead wrote:

Quote:

What you should be doing is fighting against a big brother type of government where your medical and psychological history is easily disclosed. If I were you, I would try to reverse the dx or protest against your rights being violated. No employer should have the supposed "right" to know.

You sound freaking paranoid. In Australia employers don't have to know about your medical history, but because I'm on a disabilities service my employer knows because he was looking for people with an eye for detail. He was specifically looking for someone with AS or someone like that.
Had I not let them know I had AS I would not have a job.

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05 Mar 2010, 6:31 am

If some Aspies say they don't want to be associated with retardment common in Autism, I can say that, as a mild autistic spectrum member, I don't want to be associated with the lack of social skills common in Asperger's. ;-)

Just provoking.

I really think there is no case to have a special case like Asperger's as a diagnostic group, unless it really constitutes an homogeneous sub-group, with well defined differences, and with also different causes and treatment. As far as I know, that is not the case currently.

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05 Mar 2010, 6:32 am

pensieve wrote:

timeisdead wrote:

Quote:

I don't feel paranoid because I realize how many governments commit injustices against their citizens. I understand your situation somewhat better now. From reading posts on wrongplanet, I was under the impression that employers outside of the US more easily access a person's medical and psychological records. I will research the issue to know further detail. I'm glad that you gained employment for being detail-oriented. In a college environment, I tend to prefer tests dealing with more technicalities and subtle distinction.

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05 Mar 2010, 6:41 am

pensieve wrote:

psychohist wrote:

If anything, we should do the opposite of eliminating the "Asperger's" category. We should expand Asperger's to include high functioning autism, and leave "autism" to include low functioning autism only. Then us aspies, from a position within mainstream society, will actually have a chance of making things better for the remaining auties as well.

So if we expand Asperger's to include High Functioning autism how does that work? You're leaving HFA off autism, which in your perfect world is only LFA, but the problem here is it's called HIGH FUNCTIONING AUTISM. So it's called autism but it isn't autism, because according to you the only autistics are low functioning.

What we should do is to educate people on what autism really is. Sure it can be low functioning, but then with the help of early intervention they become high functioning. Do they really need to go in for a separate diagnosis when that happens?

I couldn't care less what this disorder is called. I've been diagnosed and I've received help for it.
And this whole thing about people not getting hired after the name change - it's happening now! It has taken me seven years to find work since I turned 18.

What we should do is to raise awareness of the fact that a person's intrinsic worth is not determined by their functioning level.

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05 Mar 2010, 6:53 am

Willard wrote:

Orwell wrote:

it is not scientifically accurate to regard them as separate conditions

Well, at this point it's not scientifically accurate to regard them as identical conditions, either. My understanding is that there is evidence that genetically they may very well be different enough to classify as distinct variants - different sets of causes that create similar symptoms.

If that's the case I wonder why it is that my family, which has autism going back on both sides, contains people who clearly fit into Asperger's, people who clearly fit into autism, and people who would under current criteria only fit into PDD-NOS. Additionally, Leo Kanner had some patients who would probably today be diagnosed as Asperger's, and Asperger had some patients who he said were "feebleminded" or something like that, as well as speech delayed, and would therefore have to be put into autism by modern criteria.

In my family we have my brother who had no speech delay, no loss of speech, etc. and is therefore considered Asperger's. Then we have me who had loss of speech in very early toddlerhood, echolalia and pronoun reversal among other odd quirks, and other things that put me squarely into autism (I also had the rare but not unheard of thing where my speech and certain motor skills got shakier and shakier past puberty and by adulthood my speech is useless for communication, but that can happen to people with any spectrum diagnosis according to both Lorna Wing and a brief look at all the people I have met with the same condition). My father would either fall into autism or PDD-NOS depending on who is doing the diagnosing (speech delay but too long ago to know a lot of childhood details, he is 70 next year).

So at least in my family, even my most immediate family, the genetics appear to go either way.

The other reason that I have trouble with separating the two is because it's essentially a single-trait separation. The only thing that currently separates it is certain features of early speech development and in Asperger's having above 70ish IQ is considered necessary. (And this was not what separated Kanner and Asperger's patients either, nor is "functioning level", nearly all of Kanner's patients would be called high functioning today by one standard or another even one of the two who couldn't speak, and the word Kanner used to be synonymous with high functioning).

And what I suspect is that real subtypes will cone in clusters of traits that cross boundaries of all current autism diagnosis. (And may cross genetic boundaries considering phenotype and genotype are not identical ideas). There are people whose minds and development are incredibly similar to mine who are diagnosed with every spectrum condition and every functioning level. I believe that the current subtyping of autism separates those who are similar and puts together those who are different.

And I don't think that subtypes that rely entirely on one or two aspects of language development are valid. There are so many aspects of language that are more important. I had major receptive delays but nobody has a word for that or a special autism subtype and people with those delays exist in every current type of autism.

So I think getting rid of AS is good. Even the creator if AS (Lorna Wing, not Asperger) feels that way. It's not because I think we are all the same, but that I think the AS division does not help in distinguishing real subtypes. Autism being not a real thing as much as a word used to describe real people. I have studied how the idea of autism developed and there is no way it points to all one thing with a history that twisted. But there are many many types of people who get called autistic and I don't think AS describes a separate type the way the real divisions go. So best to scrap that division and start over.

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05 Mar 2010, 7:04 am

Who_Am_I wrote:

What we should do is to raise awareness of the fact that a person's intrinsic worth is not determined by their functioning level.

That's going to be a lot harder than changing the current autism stereotype, but I agree, that's something that needs to be changed.

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05 Mar 2010, 7:12 am

KoS wrote:

I agree they should be separated. AS does have some elements of Autism, but it is not what people think about when they think AUTISM.

I have 2 LFA brothers and a sister with AS. Compared to my brothers, my sister would not come close to being called Autistic, she shares very very few traits with them. My two brothers are also VERY different from each other, but both clearly Autisitic.

I know it bothers my sister that when people discover she has Autism, they think of the way my brothers are affected, people are anaware of the entire spectrum, and AS doesn't really fit on there as well as it should anyway.

But I also know there are certain Aspies who prefer that AS falls under the Autism umbrella for the EXACT SAME reason my sister hates it. So....go figure!! :wink:

Thing is you cannot make a judgement of that sort based on only three people. The fact is there are people under the autism label who are more like your sister than like your brothers. Under your logic because they are so different they shouldn't have to put up with being called autistic.

I have had contact with hundreds of autistic people, not a small number. There is no way to tell diagnosis by appearance. I know people who by adulthood look probably much like your brothers who are diagnosed aspies because of early language development (even though they didn't necessarily keep that level of language, there are rare autism-related conditions that can result in much later speech loss). I know people who are diagnosed with autism because they may have not talked until they were somewhere between 4 and 15, who caught up once they learned to talk and can appear less autistic to a casual observer than many people diagnosed with AS. And I know people with AS dxes who look like the most stereotypical autistics until they open their mouth (and same with those diagnosed with autism).

People who don't want to mix AS and autism because the people they know with AS don't look like sone people they know dxed with autism, don't generally get the point where their logic falls apart: There are other people dxed with autism (and not all considered high functioning either) who look absolutely nothing like the autistic people they know or like any stereotype at all of autism. So that logic just falls completely to pieces since not all people dxed with autism look remotely like the stereotype, and many people with AS dxes look totally like the stereotype. It just makes no sense if you know that.

Edited to add: I hate the DSM. I also hate the new criteria. They will result in many autistics being removed from the spectrum. They emphasize our most peripheral features and discard our most central ones (cognition/perception).

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05 Mar 2010, 8:22 am

Do any of you guys who say you don't want to be associated with certain autistic people have any idea how it feels to hear that if you are one of the people they don't want to associate with?

I am diagnosed with autism. I don't believe in functioning levels but despite the professionals knowing of my talents (and despite my never expecting it), my records never say high functioning and in some cases say low functioning or severe, in one place "idiot savant features". I reject these and their opposite labels entirely -- I don't think any person has a blanket "functioning level" -- but those are the labels I have been given.

I look very unusual to most people's eyes. When I am sitting still I apparently have a "default facial expression" that isn't standard, and something about the stillness of my body or something makes me not pass even then. (The best I can pass at is someone with a purely physical impairment causing the same look.) When I am not sitting still as my baseline state, I am 'stimming' in ways that also look very unusual.

People have yelled names like 'ret*d' out of cars at me. Teenage kids have surrounded me and tried to trick me for fun. Sexual predators have tried to kidnap me as an adult in a way normally reserved for children ("I have a toy just like that in the car..."). I have not been able to leave the house since adolescence without police being called to report a person "wandering", and have refused to believe me when I say as an adult that I live alone. People wave their hands in my face. Sometimes when I say something people act like their houseplants started using the computer. After many things like this I set up a video camera in my house and was shocked how I looked.

It is only since becoming more physically disabled that people give me a pass and assume I can understand them. I guess seeing me drive my own powerchair makes people assume "physically disabled only" where sitting me in a regular chair makes them think "IQ of 30 or less". (My approach when confronted with bigotry, if I can communicate at the time, is if someone calls me a ret*d I go yeah and proud of it, or rather be that than a bigot like you. Because going "no I'm not" just makes it sound like it would be okay if I was. Same if people call me crazy.)

Anyway, I can tell I am the sort of person people want to distance themselves from. Some people who know me and my writing deny that but if the same people saw someone who looked like me many of them would distance themselves from that person. (And the idea that a talent is all that redeems me in some people's eyes disgusts me.)

I understand, if not agree with, people who think AS is scientifically separate somehow. But for those who would distance themselves from those who look like me? You have no idea how it feels for many of us who cannot distance ourselves, to hear that. You may homestly think you are just avoiding prejudice, but avoiding it in that way reinforces it for those of us who may never be able to avoid it. That's why when people call me ret*d I respond with absolutely anything other than "but my IQ is over 70ish". Because if I distance myself that way in responding to bigots, I send the message that it would be appropriate to treat someone with a lower IQ in that way. When you distance yourselves to avoid bigotry the message you send like it or not is "Go after those people, not me.". Which, just... no.

I have also heard from some people (physically disabled, Asperger's, autistic, whatever who speak of the trauma of being lumped in, in school or other activities, with people they call "ret*d" or "crazy". Let's get one thing straight: If people in those settings who were nor "ret*d" or "crazy" found the way they were treated traumatic, then absolutely so did those who were "ret*d" or "crazy". In which case the trouble isn't who you were lumped in with but the horrible way you were all treated. If you found it traumatizing just to have to spend time around (or be considered one of) those deemed "ret*d" or "crazy" then you're the one with the problem.

I have spent time in places that "ret*d" and/or "crazy" people also spent time in. I have also (whether because of misdiagnosis or because in many day programs or self-advocacy settings the staff didn't get told the exact nature of each disabled person) been considered either of those things. When the settings were awful they were awful for all of us. Nobody likes to be patronized or traumatized or abused or to be treated like you're stupid. Nobody. In places that were decent then I had no problem being mistaken for either thing because people were treated as individuals and with respect. Simply being in an environment that contains people with impairments different from one's own, or being mistaken for them, is not the problem if everyone is treated with respect and as individuals who may differ radically from each other.

So... yeah. I am very not impressed by arguments that boil down to fleeing bigotry while throwing the rest of us to the wolves. There are better ways than that, ones that don't involve just slamming a door in our faces and running away as hard as you can.

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05 Mar 2010, 8:39 am

I was once a label Nazi, but that was because I needed the structure of the professionals to help me understand the disorder better--it was either this or that, and if you were this, you were only this. I then saw that professionals weren't a singular entity (I'm slow on the uptake), and there was so many forms of structure that it's actually closer to chaos than order; that didn't help me understand the disorders then.

Then I realized that the only point of a label is for "normal" people to accept that I need help if they want me to live to their rules.

I don't care what they call it.

(I wonder if the various iterations of Schizophrenia are arguing amongst themselves and whether they should be exclusive or not, as Schizophrenia is being folded into one label. No, no and no! We Paranoid people can't be associated with those Catatonic types!)

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05 Mar 2010, 8:49 am

anbuend wrote:

Well Said. You have no defect in your reasoning or writing, That's for sure.

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Whether one is called Asperger's or Autistic, there is still a human being beneath that label. We can not shed or skin, but we can shed our labels.

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