New York Magazine article on over diagnosis from 2014

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And where are you seeing all these 'trendy b****s'? I haven't met any other autistic people IRL, let alone any that would fit your descriptions? Not to say there aren't people who are fake about it but I imagine they are in the minority.

Lol probably the lunch ticket of being able to get SSI which keeps you below the poverty line...and being eligible for things like EBT and Medicaid...Oh yeah its such the luxary life

I can understand why you might feel like that but I don't think that should have any bearing on how medicine/psychology/psychiatry whatever should work. If one group feels others are delegitimising their diagnosis than that should be dealt with by raising awareness that it is not one size fits all and there is a range of different expressions, rather than denying the other group have a real problem. It would be like the blind begrudging the partially sighted.

I know that a line had to be drawn, but this line is drawn by society deciding that a person has to be 'significantly impaired' probably due to not wanting to use resources where not needed and also not wanting to over medicalise things like personality. As such this threshold is not directly linked to an underlying reality of whether one does or does not have the underlying pathology of autism, but rather a judgement of whether it is severe enough to warrant a diagnosis. Therefore it means people in this borderline grey area may very well have the underlying pathology, and this article seems to paint it as black and white, you are either diagnosable or you are just a bit eccentric.

I think this is quite a bad thing to do when there are so many factors that complicate it, it is not just the underlying level of impairment, but different level of compensation that have been learnt, and the different dimensions of life where it manifests, someone could learn the rules and succeed in work but still have a terrible personal life etc.

yes mine was similar, they used three diagnotic tools, as well as the cambridge 3 questionairres for prescreening, and also a battery of neurological tests, and interviewed my parents. I still can't shake the feeling that the crucial part was my diagnostic interview and that I am bias.

i'm not defending those people, I don't think there are many of them though. I don't take the 'I have a touch of aspergers' people seriously, I don't think they are even really claiming they have a diagnosable condition I think they are just using it as a shorthand for saying they are a little out of the ordinary and relate to some autistic traits. That is quite different from those who have after doing there research self diagnosed.

The article says it is one in a long line of fads, I can kind of see that but think that it might actually be due to a better understanding. Autism tends to be the end of the line after other misdiagnoses, other conditions are symptoms not the cause.

Maybe it is different in america but in the UK I have never ever heard of anyone associating aspergers with trendy, it is very much understood as the cold stereotype.

It may be a little bit of a cultural thing. Here in America, it isn't enough to just be a regular person to be cool anymore; you have to have a "PERSONALITY!" with capital letters and jazz hands. Having Asperger's adds to the look, I guess. Although, I think maybe the trend is not so much about people claiming ASD for themselves, but more about people flippantly diagnosing other people; people on TV, people they have personality clashes with, etc. "It's impossible to get along with her; I said hello yesterday, and she just Aspied-out at me! It was totally not my fault." People think Obama has Asperger's, Mitt Romney has Asperger's, Dennis Rodman has Asperger's, Warren Buffett has Asperger's, Steve Jobs had Asperger's, Putin has Asperger's.

Unfortunately that's the second time I've read that exact same article. Got the same feeling this time as last too. The author does everything possible to discount Asperger's-- it's either over diagnosed and you don't really have it, or the clinical definition has changed so it doesn't really exist, or you're making it up to suckle services from truly needy people (I'd like to know the exact benefits of diagnosis the author alludes to because I have yet to see any here in the states).

As for those that don't have it and claim they do, that's life, there will always be some asshat ruining things for other people.

The problem with Asperger's Syndrome is that some can function @ 90% of normal, just enough to where NTs think said person is normal and are just being "difficult", "seeking attention", or "just anti-social". What they don't understand is that it takes a ton of mental processing just to function at that level and that processing takes a toll in the form of stress. I wish we lived in the matrix so I could upload my thought patterns to some NTs and see how "normal" they think I am...if they survive the experience that is.

You nailed it.

There is no such thing as aspergers/asspurges/assburgers as a diagnosis. So glad that era is over. Autism with levals of functioning is the way.

In America yes (though i'm sure the rest of the world will follow.) I think that is beside the point as ASD-1 is basically exactly the same thing, it is just a change of term, and everything Aristophanes said is still valid.

Very much so. I agree with Aristophanes completely (especially the part about asshats, which don't seem particularly fun to wear).

Which brings up another question. Does everyone think the DSM-V was right to eliminate Asperger's and group it in with autism? I've gone back and forth. I can see the many parallels, so I've been convinced they are part of the same neurological disorder, although autism proper has many more difficulties. Still, I currently think it is right to combine them. Do you prefer to be considered 'autistic' rather than 'Aspie?' Do you think they are separate enough to be their own disorders, as they were in the DSM-IV? My psychologist says she prefers the DSM-IV definition because, while autism and Asperger's are related, she sees enough differences to warrant a separation; she says Aspies have different needs than autistics with lower function. What does everyone think?

I think it doesn't much matter come October there will be a huge shift in how people are diagnosed again (in the U.S.). As they try to make a globally unified system of diagnosis. So then people can argue over how horrible that is.

Yeah I still default to Asperger's Syndrome, but high functioning on the spectrum, or level1 (must be European, haven't encountered that one yet) are all the same thing, it's just a different term for the same concept.

As for different categories, no I think they should all be on a spectrum because they all come from the same thing: the mind processing too much information. I have level1, high function, AS, whatever you want to call it, but I do understand low functioning (which is a poor term in my opinion because the term itself is derogatory-- low functioning meaning "low functioning to other people/society"). For the people with higher functioning autism, imagine your mind's ability to absorb information cranked up an extra 20%...in a sense "low-functioning" is actually very very high functioning autism-- so high that the outside stimulus is so intense you can't concentrate enough to form verbal words in real time and the constant need for stims to alleviate the sensory pressures. If someone is upset that they're being lumped together with "low functioning" I find that to be worse than NT's behavior towards people with Asperger's-- they should know how it feels to be left out, harassed, and put down and should have much more compassion towards people that actually get worse social stigma than themselves.

When I was a substitute teacher I was in a classroom with a low functioning autistic child. I wasn't diagnosed with anything but depression at the time, had no idea what AS or low functioning autism really was. The kids were 5th graders and constantly harassed the child because "he doesn't speak, so he doesn't know what's going on". I was 23 at the time and even though I knew nothing about autism my instincts told me that the autistic child understood everything going on around him because I myself had gone through "phases" of mutism. I ended up sitting next to him the rest of the class and interacting as much as I could, even eating lunch with him at break-- I could tell he understood because he stopped flapping his hands and screaming when I gave him the attention he probably always craved but was completely neglected. That experience right there is all I need to know about high functioning/low functioning differences, because we're all the same just differing degrees.

Do "low functioning" autistics need different services/accommodations to function in society than "high functioning" autistics? Certainly. But that doesn't negate the underlying fabric that ties us together-- our brain wiring. I view the "higher functioning" as having a responsibility to defend, befriend, and accept their "low functioning" brothers and sisters because as hostile as the world seems to a person with Asperger's it's actually much much more hostile to those on the lower side of the spectrum that can't verbally communicate and have to constantly stim to control their sensory overloads. That's why I'm against separating it.

*side note: I sent three kids to the principles office for harassing the child. The principle brought them back, took me outside the classroom and told me he didn't have time to babysit "kids just being kids. Just do your job or you won't be back". I told him that was fine with me. Unfortunately for him, substitute teachers were in high demand and he didn't have any other options throughout the school year except to rely on me, lol.

what is happening in October? I think it is already more unified than people might think, even though in the UK we don't use DSM-V they have already stopped diagnosing AS in favour of ASD in anticipation of ICD changing

well said. I don't think anything except the scientific understanding of the condition should be a factor in classification. So that goes for Aspies who don't want to be considered Autistic, and Aspies who don't want other Aspies to 'delegitimise' their own condition etc, that just shouldn't be a factor if the same underlying pathology exists across all cases.