Crassus wrote:
Don't quote me the DSM, that thing is fifteen years out of date at best, and designed to describe behaviors evident in somebody with the underlying brain they assumed. Science has moved forward, even if many claiming to be practitioners of psychoanalysis in a medical professional capacity have not. Take a look at the findings of the APA board convening on the next version of the DSM, and take a look at the actual medical studies they are basing their changes on. Please do explain to me why you come to a different conclusion than I have if you do.
Besides that I think we should all be quoting the ICD - what to do to establish a common ground of AS/autism right now as long as there is no next-generation set of criteria that is in use? So if we were not to quote the DSM, does that mean we will base any diagnoses of AS on believes and opinions until we get another (valid or invalid) international standard that many people agree on and use for diagnosis.
I mean, yes, the DSM might be outdated and plain wrong in several aspects, but literally stopping to refer to it means we got no current standards and everybody might go about what they want to do. I see a problem there, personally. I think the AS category is already too broad and tugged into most different directions. There are already enough people saying they have AS and that AS has 'has little in common with autism and autism is ret*d' or people who dislike that people with AS are associated with kids and teens with severe/profound autism and claim that 'AS is hardly any problem at all and doesn't have a lot to do with real autism'.
In society each of us who doesn't agree with these and other statements is dealing with lots of ignorance. So I really can't see the sense in rejecting a common ground however inaccurate its details turned out to be with more than a decade passing when many people automatically use that to do what they feel like.
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Autism + ADHD
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The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it. Terry Pratchett