The reason the notion of autism spectrum should be offensive

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The symptoms of autism are the same across functioning levels: social impairment, sensory issues, repetitive and obsessive behaviours, and so forth. Someone can be mildly or severely impaired in any of them. Intellectual disability is a comorbid that can affect people's ability to function. Autism with intellectual disability isn't a completely different disorder from autism without, because they have the same traits. The separation seems to be based on what the person appears like on the surface and how well they can fit in with society.

Because they are interested in the topic.

As long as forum rules are not being broken I have no idea why diagnostic classifications of autism is an inappropriate topic in an autism forum.

I haven't heard of that research, but the relation between autism and OCD sounds quite likely just from pure behaviorist point of view. I would associate OCD with Asperger specifically rather than autism spectrum at large, since it doesn't have speech delays. I would also suspect the same might be true with OCPD (not to be confused with OCD: OCPD is a personality disorder -- which is what letter P stands for -- while OCD is an anxiety disorder).

Yep. King of Rats was pretty cool. I talked to her a little bit in threads, though not in PM's. She was having a pretty hard life, though she did get pleasure from various types of animals.

Her name came from the fact that there were many rats in some institutions she was forced to stay in.

Not anymore. They made OCD its own category now. It's no longer an anxiety disorder is why because they found out their anxiety is caused by OCD, not the other way around. Like how autism can cause anxiety but it's not an anxiety disorder.

First of all, its just a theory, it wasn't actually proven that isolation is a sole reason.

Secondly, if this theory is right, why don't the doctors simply teach autistics everything they need to be taught hereby convert ALL of low functioning into high functioning. Since this doesn't work, it seems to imply that there is more going on than simple lack of information.

Thats quite interesting. Is there a general tendency in DSM 5 to prefer single-entity categories? It seems the case with autism and OCD, but I don't know about the rest of the DSM 5: I only studied DSM back in the 90-s when it was DSM 4.

Yes I have those questions too. I mean, you were the one who told me you are like rainman. So those questions naturally arize as a result of you telling me that.

But you seem to be aware of your problems. So then why would you need a supervision? You mentioned you would wonder across the street in front of a car. But, the fact that you mentioned that, implies that you know this is something you shouldn't do. But if you know you shouldn't do it, why would you do it? Also, what would have happened if you are left in the house alone? There are no cars in the house. So what would you be doing? And if you know its bad to do, why would you do it?

Okay, I watched that video. I never had that kind of experience, which brings back the issue of splitting up a diagnosis: why should I have the same diagnosis as her if I never had the same experience she has?

If you re-read my original post, you will find that is exactly what I been saying. But I view it as a problem. I mean, if you say that social skills is a prime symptome and mental retardation is a secondary while you are talking about profoundly ret*d kid, what you are implying is that having social skills problems is even worse than being profoundly ret*d. Well, thats what I am against.

Now, what I am proposing is replacing the diagnosis "autism with intellectual impairment" with a diagnosis "intellectual impairment with autistic features". Change the accents, thats what I am trying to say.

Here is an analogy that would illustrate this point. I don't know about DSM 5, but as far as DSM 4 is concerned, there is a diagnosis "bipolar disorder with psychotic features" and also "schizoaffective disorder". The former is mostly bipolar and a little bit of psychosis, the latter is mostly psychosis and a little bit of bipolar. Hence, they are classified in the separate sections: the former is classified with mood disorders, the latter with psychotic disorders. Now, its entirely possible that those two disorders are part of the same spectrum: after all, they both include both mood and psychotic component, the only issue is how much of which. But that didn't stop them from being classified separately. I propose to do the same thing with autism.

In other words, what I am saying is this. There is an autism spectrum ("requiring minimal support", "requiring moderate support", "requring extensive support") and there is a mental retardation spectrum ("mild", "moderate", "severe", "profound"). So, since we have both spectrums, we have a choice to make in terms of where to classify the people that are both autistic and ret*d: should they be classified on the autism spectrum or on the mental retardation spectrum? Currently they are classified on autism spectrum as "autism with intellectual impairment"; I am proposing to re-classify them into the mental retardation spectrum as "mental retardation with autistic features".



You missed the context of where pain was mentioned. Basically, you brought up cancer analogy and said that cancer can also range from its mild forms to people screaming in pain, yet it is all cancer. In other words, pain in case of cancer is analogous to mental retardation in case of autism. In other words, I weren't talking about literal pain in case of autism, I was only focusing in this analogy.

In any case, what I was trying to say is that, in case of cancer, pain is a consequence of cancer; but, in case of low functioning autism, the mental retardation is *not* a consequence of bad social skills. Thats why, for cancer, it makes sense to make cancer a primary diagnosis, but in case of low functioning autistics it doesn't make sense to talk about bad social skills as primary feature.