DSM-5: How will they differeniate?

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Been hearing -- as we all have -- about the combining of all the austism-like behaviors into one category called Autism Spectrum Disorder. My question is how people are going to be rated in terms of severity of the condition. We can't all be just called autistic, right? I just can't see the sense of grouping a person who can barely function in society with someone who is high-functioning but eccentric. Will there be some kind of scale? Like for instance a person previously referred to as having moderate Asperger's would be a 5 on a 1-10 scale. Or maybe some kind of grid where the x-axis is intelligence level and the y-axis is societal functioning. These are of course just ideas, but I can't see any other way of making this new system work. Or maybe none of this matters. ASD will be ASD no matter what.

I guess what I'm concerned about is my own issues and how autism is viewed in general by society. I'm self-diagnosed at the moment but test WAY high for Asperger's, so I'm pretty sure I'm on the spectrum. But I get through life -- not great, but OK. If I go and get an official diagnosis, am I going to be seen as dysfunctional as someone who can't care for themselves and is in some group home? And before anyone jumps me, I don't mean to suggest that I'm somehow better than those people -- just that I'm better able to care for myself and not as disabled.

In levels 1, 2 and 3. I can't remember if I'm a 1 or 3. They took the severity scale off the DSM website so I can't know for sure, but I remember still fitting it.

According to Examiner.com, this new version will pretty much make it clearer that Autism is recognized as a spectrum instead of something that reflects on the differences in diagnoses, like Asperger's syndrome, PDD-NOS, etc.... Even a critic, you can see his comments about his negative commentary on the new DSM as a whole here, says that the fact that ASDs will now be more organized under an umbrella term is actually the one bright spot in the bleak future of psychiatry that he thinks is evident with the forthcoming of this new edition of the DSM.

Personally, I think this may be due to the fact that ASDs can't really be diagnosed in the same way as even other individual mental health issues like depression, generalized anxiety disorder, etc.... because of the variety of symptoms. I guess with this way of thinking, the APA justified viewing ASDs as a true spectrum with a series of symptoms under one diagnosis rather than a series of diagnoses along with a confusing series of symptoms where diagnoses may even overlap.

This is probably good news for me and my diagnosis. My first diagnosis, about a month and a half ago, said that I have PDD-NOS while last week, my therapist told me that I have both PDD and Asperger's, which has really caused me a great deal of confusion. Nevertheless, he still recommended that I join a support group for Autism anyway. So all I know is that at the most, I'll be at the 2nd level of severity since the few symptoms that I have can be considered pretty severe. So I guess the goal of this new edition is making it easier for psychologists and psychiatrists to give a child/adult who's clearly Autistic a diagnosis within the spectrum.

So I think that your fears about how Autism will be viewed in society should be alleviated by the fact that this actually gives a scale of severity, like how society's pretty much familiar with how diabetes works (Type I/Type II) with one considered more severe than the other due to Type I being chronic and Type II able to be more easily controlled. In the same way, the first level would mean that you can take care of yourself (maybe I would fall within the first level), the second level would be a bit more severe but you probably can still function in your daily life (though with a bit of assistance necessary), while the third would mean that you're probably dependent. In any case, just because you have a certain diagnosis doesn't really mean that you'll never be able to do good things in your life, I'm sure you'll be successful in life. Just make sure you do get checked eventually, since all of us need at least a bit of help psychologically.