Can someone with aspergers be low functioning?

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I know this might sound sillly, but I've sen on a documentary; one boy with aspergers who wasn't independent at all. He couldn't make tea, he couldn't run his bath, he couldn't even speak that well, but it said he had aspergers. I've heard people with AS are high functioning but I mean, seriously; how is that high functioning?

People are diagnosed with whatever the clinician thinks works best. There's a study by one or more of the people involved with changing AS + PDD-NOS + autism + CDD into autism spectrum disorder that found that what you're likely to be diagnosed with depends a lot on where you're diagnosed.

Maybe his speech was on time as a toddler and that's why they said AS. I have low functioning AS and a lot of people have noted that I was very much 'classic autism' as a child, except that my speech was on time. Although my speech was on time, I didn't use it for communicative purposes until I was about 4. My Mum was ill at the time though and was too busy trying to stop my ADHD brother from destroying himself by mistake (he was a toddler) to worry about my lack of speech. People with Low functioning AS can sometimes be worse than people diagnosed with HFA from what I have seen (as adults that is).

1 - In the jargon of ASD experts, "high functioning" have usually the meaning of "without mental retardation"; does not have necessarly to to with being funcional in everyday life

2 - According to the DSM criteria, "[t]here is no clinically significant delay in cognitive development or in the development of age-appropriate self help skills, adaptive behavior (other than in social interaction) and curiosity about the environment in childhood.", meaning that (at least in solitary activities) an aspie has to be relativily functional.

3 - By the ICD criteria "self-help skills, adaptive behaviour and curiosity about the environment during the first three years should be at a level consistent with intellectual development"; I think that according to this criteria is compatible with being "low-functioning" in daily life (in these sense, you only have to be high functioning in the first 3 years of life)

I'm not independent, and I'm fully grown (30).

I can't brush my teeth, I can't make most types of food, and all sorts of other things.

Said to have AS by the people at Attwood's. Said to be far too mild by them to really have autism proper. Make what you will of that.

Per research I've read, a lot of people diagnosed with AS fail to meet the "no clinically significant delay in the development of age-appropriate self help skills and adaptive behavior."

So for all I know, I could really have severe Autism but just have a ''mild AS'' label because the doctors decided to give me that one?

There are low and high functioning versions of Aspergers..... atleast thats what my friendship group of aspies n I think. We range from High functioning High IQ's to High Funtioning Low IQ to Low Function High IQ (me).
I couldnt make an sandwich, feed myself propperly or brush my ahir until i was 15. and even now at 21, cooking is really hard. I can run a bath n such for myself, but dishes n such can be forgotten about for ages.

ive lived on my own n it was a nightmare.
I am not capable of looking after myself propperly but i can build a wooden chair from scratch, draw the most beautiful landscape n tell the most awe inspiring stories...

Well I'm high-functioning. I just don't cook or clean because I'm lazy (which I don't associate with AS because I know MANY NTs of my age who never bother to pinch in with the housework). But I have cooked before - I've cooked a Lasange from scratch before, and that is something I thought I'd never be able to do. I just have difficulty reading instructions because I think it's from fear of mis-reading then giving myself food-poisoning (sort of an OCD thing mixed with Emetophobia).

It feels like I am capable of everything, but fears and anxieties stop me more than the AS itself. I have mild Agoraphobia, so I find it hard to go out on my own, but I can do it because if I force myself to go out I can do it, and I can get buses on my own and I'm capable of revising a bus timetable and sticking to it. Also I have Social Phobia/Anxiety, so I find certain things hard to do out in public because of the fear of being watched all the time and the paranoid pessimistic thoughts what go round and round in my head making me think that everybody's laughing at me or whispering about me or noticing something about me, which makes me clench up inside with self-pity. Also my paranoia and not trusting people is another thing that holds me back from doing all the things I want to do.

Maybe when I argue about HFA vs LFA I probably have got the facts wrong. I just can't think of another way to describe a visible difference I can see between the two. Like, how come some Autistics are put in mainstream school and some are put in special schools? I was put in mainstream school, and I coped pretty well in mainstream school, and a few of the other kids there had other mild conditions and special needs, like Dyspraxia, Dyslexia, ADHD, learning difficulties, and other conditions like that. Not sure if ADHD can range from mild to severe, if it did maybe the child with a severe case of ADHD may have to go to a special school due to disruptions. But when I popped to a special school with my friend to meet her sister, the children there were much different, and had more severe cases and had to be taught a completely different way in a completely different environment to mainstream school. I was able to be taught and treated like NT children, only with a bit more support with my work from the teacher's assistants. But the kids at the special school had things like Down's Syndrome, Mental Retardation, severe Autism, Cerebral Palsy, and some were in wheelchairs who couldn't speak, and there were even toys lying about and brightly-coloured walls, even though these kids were teenagers.

So if there isn't any difference between mild and severe with conditions, then how come mainstream school and special schools are different, and the children at special schools are treated differently too, and wouldn't stand a chance in mainstream school?

Last edited by Joe90 on 03 Jan 2012, 11:55 am, edited 1 time in total.

Who has said there isn't any difference? Are you going to keep saying this no matter how often it's explained? It's not about different severity levels being the same thing. It's about expectations that come with the labels - people expect high functioning to mean capable of a lot of things a lot of people described as high functioning may not be capable of, and people expect low functioning to mean incapable of a lot of things people described as low functioning may be capable of. This has nothing to do with everyone being identical - autism is a very diverse diagnosis and two people can present very differently.

Technically, no. He shouldn't have been diagnosed with AS because he has significant self-care skill delay.

But he is one of many people who should have been diagnosed classic autism, and were instead diagnosed with AS, simply because they could talk. I'm pretty sure that most Aspies can be diagnosed with classic autism rather than Asperger's, even cases that aren't so obviously miscategorized as this kid's. Any problems with self-care, any problems with communication or conversations; any unusual or echolalic speech, and you qualify for classic autism. Asperger's, properly diagnosed, is probably a very, very small group indeed, because classic autism takes diagnostic precedence.

The thing is, though: Does the distinction between AS and Autistic Disorder have any relevance? I don't think it does. On the one hand, you have non-independent, language-using people like this kid; on the other hand, you have people who had a speech delay and are fully independent; and then you have people in the middle, with skills scattered all over the place. There's no clear dividing line between the two groups.

Asperger's has served its purpose of teaching the psychology profession that autistic people can be people who can talk and take care of themselves; but that job is finished, and now we know, so I think it's time to retire AS and just say "autism spectrum".

I am betting that lot of aspies don't have AS and they are actually autistic. Yes I mean autistic disorder from the criteria.

I bet that is another reason why they are getting rid of this label because maybe it doesn't really exist and it has always been autism all along than just a form of it. But I wonder what would happen to the true aspies who actually meet the AS criteria? Not be on the spectrum? Would they have social communication disorder instead?

I thought an essential part of aspergers is being high functioning? The labels vary from person to person and they can get rather screwy. I would think if your language was on time but your self-help skills weren't you would be diagnosed as PDD-NOS. It doesn't makes sense to be diagnosed as aspergers if you mostly resemble autism.

The teen on True Life with Asperger's seemed to also have mental retardation.

I know the IQ limit is 70 for AS.

Couldn't one still be very mildly ret*d with that IQ?

or do they always rule out AS if MR is present?

I don't mean the savant who was having all the meltdowns, the boy who was doing stand-up.

I look forward to ASD nukularizing Awesomedrome AS, PDD-Confus(ed/ing)-R-U(s), and Big Bad Autismism.

...lmfao.