Page 4 of 4 [ 52 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1, 2, 3, 4

PrupQon
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker

User avatar

Joined: 16 Aug 2007
Gender: Female
Posts: 61
Location: tldr

17 Aug 2007, 11:04 am

I have asperger syndrome, i don't really think it is to do with autism although the specialist called it a mild form of autism.
I know people who are autistic and i am nothing like them. I can live independantly, look after myself and go shopping and no-one would ever know.
Ive not heard of borderline NT/AS before although it was once thought that i maybe had borderline personality disorder.



mmaestro
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 6 Aug 2007
Age: 47
Gender: Male
Posts: 522
Location: Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA

17 Aug 2007, 12:19 pm

Danielismyname wrote:
You meet the criteria or you don't;

That's true in and of itself, but I think the wider question then becomes what do you think the criteria are for? Are the criteria the be all and end all of what Asperger's is? I don't think so, I think the criteria are a useful tool for recognising an underlying brain disorder. It's the disorder that means you have Asperger's, not fitting into the criteria. If we reach the point where we can recognise what Asperger's looks like on a brain scan, then the diagnostic criteria become irrelevant and can be superceded by a physical exam. We'll probably find people who have an Asperger's brain structure who don't quite fit into the diagnostic criteria, and some who do who, in fact, don't have Asperger's. The criteria are just a useful tool, that's all.
Healthcare is, in the end, just a means to improve your health and cure disease, including improving mental health and in some cases function. That's why I'm less interested in following a completely rigid set of diagnostic criteria. In the end, if someone is close enough and it's clear that a diagnosis would help them in some way, then digging deeper and trying to figure out what's going on inside of them is worthwhile. I'm aware I'm fortunate to only barely, barely fit within the diagnostic criteria as I understand them. I'd wonder if I were correct, but I've got enough secondary symptoms such as taking almost anything anyone says literally on first hearing, which aren't part of the diagnostic criteia but which are clearly Asperger's traits, that I'm sure Asperger's is what's going on in my brain.


_________________
"You're never more alone than when you're alone in a crowd"
-Captain Sheridan, Babylon 5

Music of the Moment: Radiohead - In Rainbows


Danielismyname
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 2 Apr 2007
Age: 44
Gender: Male
Posts: 8,565

18 Aug 2007, 2:46 am

The criteria is what we've got now; tomorrow doesn't matter if you want to be diagnosed today.

However, I agree, the criteria is there to recognize symptoms and label you with said disorder as there's no anatomical or functional test that can pick up an autisic spectrum disorder. It probably is a good idea to do brain imaging studies of those who meet the criteria for Asperger's and those who don't -- I'm unsure if they've done this or not yet. They've done it with those with autistic disorder:

The data on brain anatomy is scarce and inconsistent but here are some findings:

Reduced neuronal cell size and increased cell packing density in parts of the limbic system (Bauman and Kemper, 1994)
Enlarged brain size (Bailey et al, 1998)
Reduced volumes of amygdala and hippocampus (Aylward et al. 1999)
Enlarged frontal lobe cortex volume (Carper and Courchesne, 2000)
Increased white matter indicating poorer learning connections (Cohen, 1994)



arem
Snowy Owl
Snowy Owl

User avatar

Joined: 31 Jul 2007
Age: 42
Gender: Male
Posts: 155

19 Aug 2007, 6:04 pm

I'd love to see plots of scores of EQ/SQ and AQ tests... I imagine that there's just one bell-curve (or other simple distribution), and normal/NT is the peak of the curve. People far enough to the right have ASDs, people to the left probably have something else. Then diagnosing an ASD is just working out how far along the line you are... eg., you'd get diagnosed for being 4.5 standard deviations away from the norm, etc. Much neater IMHO than boxing a small set of "symptoms".


_________________
I'm... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯