They plan to delete Asperger from DSM 5

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I'm not sure. I'm just going by how a lot of people here say they can pass as normal.

One of my best friends is the president of the local autistic organization. She is HFA. She did not speak until she was 5. She is brilliant. She is powerful. She and I have discussed that there doesn't seem to be much difference between our conditions, except for that she stims a lot more.

One case doesn't prove anything. Just because you happen to be more functional than most people diagnosed with normal autism, doesn't mean that all people with Asperger's are. If I wanted to "prove" things the same way you do, I might say that the two people I know in real life who are diagnosed with classic autism were both more functional than me; therefore Asperger's must be more severe! One case doesn't make any sort of distinction; it doesn't even make a trend. It's just one case.

On average, yes. Those diagnosed with AS are "higher functioning" (need less special assistance). But I do not think that means anything for diagnostic purposes. It's not that "having AS causes you to be higher functioning," but more like, "being higher functioning causes you to be diagnosed with AS". There is no clear line between AS/HFA. The groups are basically created by the history of how we discovered autism and defined it for the first time, then enhanced by the stereotype of AS as high-functioning.

If the only reason Asperger's tends to be more independent than classic autism is that psychologists diagnose the people with AS/HFA who are more independent as Asperger's, then the distinction is purely an artifact of the way psychologists see those two categories. It's not a distinction that would be obvious to people looking at the overall group of AS/HFA while unaware of the two categories.

It would be like turning high-functioning dyslexia into a completely different disorder, and then arbitrarily saying, "If you learned to read somewhat without special help, you're Disorder X, not dyslexia," even though, just like people with more obvious dyslexia, you still have trouble decoding written words.

Those who are "high functioning" can become lower functioning if put in stressful situations, if they are ill, or if things go awry in their lives. I prefer to think of (accurate) labels as being helpful - they can allow an individual to recognize potential limitations to be able to more effectively work with the limitations.

Unfortunately for some some who can mask their impairments, they receive no diagnosis or assistance, and when things go wrong in their lives they have few options for finding help.

Z

But, these are the people with impairments. If you cannot handle stressful situations, you are impaired. Most of us can handle one on one situations, just not several people at once.
The question is, what is meant by "masking" an impairment? If you are stressed out easily you cannot "mask" that. You either get stressed out and react or you don't. When people start talking about "masking" that is when they need a critique, because you simply cannot "mask" an impairment. If you can, you might not have said impairment in the first place.

IMO, people who claim they have a disorder but can "mask" are going to take the seriousness away from having a disorder. It's going to make said disorder seem milder in the eyes of doctors. It becomes a disadvantage for those who cannot "mask".


LFA have more problems communicating and socializing, both, but my experience with AS is it causes rather moderate social impairment (lack of reciprocity, wanting to be the center of attention, immaturity and responding wrongly, being too long winded, having a hard time accepting other's pov, stubborness, contrariness at times, obsessing on social situations, insecurity and discomfort while talking to others, awkwardness) I'm not even sure what my other impairments are because the socializing issues take precedence since they interfer with my life the most, although, I get confused easily when a lot is going on around me and I stand there with a blank expression on my face while everyone else does everything.
But, as far as doing other NT things, like, shopping, driving, living on my own (more or less), exercising...the list is nearly endless, I have no problem with.
Being lousy at socializing can have a tremendous impact on one's life. It affects how much money you make, finding employment, keeping employment, safety issues...another endless list. This is what makes the impairment moderate to severe, to me - the amount of impact and inconvenience it causes.

Is it like HFA? I don't know. It seems like some HFAs are better at socializing, hence, more functional, than me.

My friend may seem like an anecdotal case, but keep in mind Temple Grandin is also an HFA, not an aspie. That's also anecdotal.. but the spectrum is broader than we realize sometimes.

They would have to change the diagnostic criteria for autism if AS is to fall under autism. I've compared the DSM's criteria for autism and AS. AS requires only 2 social impairments and one impairment related to movement, routine or interest. AS also requires normal language development. Autism required at least six impairments. One must be in language, one must be social and two must be related to movement, routine or interest.
At the end of the day AS and HFA are generally different enough that they should be considered two different things.

Masking would refer to the trait/symptom or its level of severity being difficult to ascertain either by an outside observer generally, or from the perspective of some particular observer.

One common way in which impairment is often “masked” in younger persons, is when the person’s apparent abilities combine with generalized expectations so that observers misinterpret impairment (usually as deliberate trouble making). A specific example of this would be a child who is precocious in the terms of their lexicon (the vocabulary of words they comprehend and can use in communication), and in comprehending and using grammar (the rules of language), but are impaired in comprehending pragmatic communication. When such a child responds to non literal language literally, their abilities with more formal aspects of language might “mask” the impairment by causing adults to assume they are just being cheeky rather than actually misunderstanding (for instance when told to look someone in the eye, and the child responds by asking which eye, adults could easily think thee child is deliberately pretending to not understand because their skills in formal language “mask” their deficit in non formal language through misinterpretation).

That depends both on the person who is stressed and the observers of the distressed one.

Being stressed unnecessarily is detrimental. Whether one reacts overtly or not, the experience of stress when others feel none is impairing. Reactions can range from impaired performance on some other measure, through to obvious “stress” reactions, with anomalous reactions in between. Some with AS laugh when stressed and this will “mask” the stress from the point of view of the average observer.

When I was a child, and I was in an unexpected situation, I would ask persistent and pedantic questions, talk non stop, become very excitable, or lapse into complete silence where I had difficulty and discomfort talking. This was never understood by adults around me as impairment and a reaction to anxiety/stress (with attempts to self sooth through acquisition of information), but just as difficult behavior. A child who appears quite happy but is extraordinarily questioning, non stop chatting and quite loud, is not readily interpreted as motivated by anxiety and stress.

The thing is who they are masking it from.
This “masking” is not necessarily positing passing for normal either persistently or at all. Someone might engage in behavior that does not appear ASD related (to the non expert), but still fails to look like typical behavior. Hence the problems with misdiagnosis of ASDs as psychiatric/mental disorders/illnesses.

AS refers to impairment in a triad of domains. The particular manifestation after decades of living is actually not the point. Impairment in the relevant triad is the diagnostically significant issue.

Plenty of people are quite discernible to specialists but “masked” for those who have scanty knowledge of AS. This does not mean that the “oddities” arising from their traits are not socially damaging, just that the manifestation of the oddity, does not match every Tom and Dick and Harriet’s stereotype about people with AS.

Further, AS is not socially fatal. There are reasons why AS interferes with social relations, and the mechanics can be manipulated to an individual’s advantage, including an individual with AS.

Anecdote:

I still haven't seen someone with AS* who has as severe autistic symptoms as me (I've seen...too many, really); I've seen people with AS with far more challenging behaviour (aggression), but that's not a core autistic symptom.

*Unless you want to say that Rain Man and Kazan have AS because they have speech; I haven't seen anyone in person like me, other than parents describing that their children are like me (who have Autism). I've seen kids like how I was, but no adults how I am now (I can't relate to anbuend's videos, and Donna Williams is from another universe as far as autism is compared to me).

Actually there is a reason to single out Asperger from all the other thousands of shades of autism, namely the fact that Asperger is very prevalent. In fact, researches have shown that it is 4 times more common than autism. This means that it would be 4 times more common than if we add ALL the other forms of autism together, which clearly single it out.

But still I do see that it is a spectrum. So this brings up another idea: how about instead of removing Asperger, remove autism. And instead of saying Asperger is high functioning autism, just say that autism is low functioning Asperger. That would be consistent with the fact that Asperger is far more prevalent.

This. I just say autistic so I don't have to spend 5 minutes explaining what Asperger's is.

That's not really a distinction. It's like saying that mild depression is more prevalent than severe depression (true), so it must be a separate disorder. (I'm not talking about dysthymia here, the long-term variant; but mild and severe major depressive disorder.) The milder end of ANY disorder is more prevalent. For example, take the many different configurations lumped into Mental Retardation. The vast majority are Mild. The majority of the rest are Moderate. Severe/Profound makes up a tiny portion of the whole thing. That doesn't make them a qualitatively different thing because they're less prevalent. It'd be like diagnosing a different illness if you got the flu and had to be hospitalized for it, versus if you got it and only spent three days in bed. Or diagnosing a different condition if you had a huge problem with OCD that took up all your time, versus having just a few barely intrusive rituals.

All this "but Autism is more severe!" stuff doesn't make much sense to me. There are strong and weak versions of every single diagnosis out there. Just because people get stronger or weaker traits doesn't mean that the diagnosis should be different.

I agree that mild and severe can have the same name. But why should the name be derived from severe one instead of a mild one? I suggest referring to ALL forms of autism, including the profoundly ret*d non-verbal people, as having Asperger's. What we now call autism will simply be "severe Asperger" while what we now call Asperger will be mild/moderate Asperger.

It's like which came first, the chicken or the egg? Which came first, Autism or Asperger? Why do we have to call it Asperger? Why can't we call it Autism? Maybe even Asperger Autism? We can combine Kanner/Asperger/Autism if you like.

That's just semantics... Autism is a better word for it, in my opinion, because it describes the social difficulty; Asperger's is just named after a guy who discovered and partly described it (he thought it was a personality disorder), plus, it really lends itself to getting bastardized into "ass burger". I don't particularly want to leave the entire spectrum open to juvenile puns; just the Aspies getting it is bad enough.

I've used the term "Asperger's autism" myself.

Well, autism doesn't "describe social difficulty" either, unless you know the meaning of a latin word. And if you do, you might as well be familiar with Asperger, too.

Beyond semantics, since autism, being more rare, is more "specialized", if an aspie is re-diagnosed as autistic they will assume they suddenly became more severe. Asperger, on the other hand, is very broad, so if autistic is re-diagnosed as an aspie they won't assume much.

Now I know that in reality it might be the opposite since, despite the fact that Asperger is more common, people are less familiar with it. But that is ironic, isn't it.