The DSM IV's page on AS has this criterion:
"The disturbance causes clinically significant impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning"
The DSM V has this:
"Symptoms cause clinically significant impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of current functioning."
Clinically significant is a grey area, is it not? I mean, is it clinically significant that my wife and I had friends in common for ten years before we finally met for the first time? Or that I graduated (albeit with a master's degree) 8 years late? In my early childhood, the symptoms caused a clinically significant impairment in my ability to see a violent outburst from my parents coming and save myself a beating, but by the time I reached my twenties, I could keep myself alive, assemble a circle of friends, generally enjoy myself while struggling to graduate and pay off my student debts, and now I'm the very picture of middle class normality. Am I alone in thinking that diagnosis is as much a matter of where you are as it is of who you are?
10 Nov 2019, 11:31 pm
