Was anyone aware of this?

Post Reply New Topic

It's newspaper website articles, not video

I came across a video of an interesting talk given in the UK by Temple Grandin in June 2012
(see first video on the page), hosted by the National Autistic Society

http://www.autism.org.uk/conferences/grandin2012 (be warned, she hardly pauses for breath - it comes across like the longest monologue you'll ever hear! But also very interesting and entertaining)

I was pleased to find the video as tickets to see Temple Grandin talk are usually expensive - near on £100 for a previous visit ie way out of my price range, so to see her talk for free like this is ideal.

Anyway, partway through the talk she refers to the planned future removal of Asperger's Syndrome from DSM-V and she says there will be a diagnosis change, with Asperger's being diagnosed in the future as 'Social Communication Disorder', not Autism. This is the first time I've heard anything like this said and wondered if it was news to everyone else(?)

I couldn't tell if she was speaking from a position of authority/inside information on the matter or if she was just speculating re what might happen in future.

I wasn't aware of this 'Social Communication Disorder' at all but looking at the DSM-V website I've found it and it seems to be a proposed new condition as it wasn't in DSM-IV:-

http://www.dsm5.org/ProposedRevisions/P ... px?rid=489

"A. Persistent difficulties in pragmatics or the social uses of verbal and nonverbal communication in naturalistic contexts, which affects the development of social reciprocity and social relationships that cannot be explained by low abilities in the domains of word structure and grammar or general cognitive ability.

B. Persistent difficulties in the acquisition and use of spoken language, written language, and other modalities of language (e.g., sign language) for narrative, expository and conversational discourse. Symptoms may affect comprehension, production, and awareness at a discourse level individually or in any combination that are likely to endure into adolescence and adulthood, although the symptoms, domains, and modalities involved may shift with age.

C. Rule out Autism Spectrum Disorder. Autism spectrum disorder by definition encompasses pragmatic communication problems, but also includes restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests or activities as part of the autism spectrum. Therefore, Autism Spectrum Disorder needs to be ruled out for Social Communication Disorder to be diagnosed. Social Communication Disorder can occur as a primary impairment or co-exist with disorders other than Autism Spectrum Disorder (e.g., Speech Disorders Learning Disorder, Intellectual Disorders)"

D. Symptoms must be present in early childhood (but may not become fully manifest until speech, language, or communication demands exceed limited capacities).

E. The low social communication abilities result in functional limitations in effective communication, social participation, academic achievement, or occupational performance, alone or in any combination."

I can see the point Temple was making, ie people who may previously have been diagnosed as having Asperger's Syndrome may well end up with this Social Communication Disorder diagnosis instead if it ends up in the DSM-V, as with there being no separate autism category for Asperger's and the diagnostician believing the person doesn't present with autistic-like features, they may well decide it's not autism.

I find it incredible that, having created Asperger's Syndrome as a concept, they are now busy trying to wipe it out of existence! I think Temple might also say something like 'It's to do with funding availability that this is happening', which, even if she doesn't say it, makes total sense to me!

The 'system' has never really known what to do with people who have Asperger's Syndrome; they don't really know how to effectively help a lot of people diagnosed with it, so now they're pretending it's not in existence any more and trying to assign a more general 'has social communication problems' diagnosis to make up for the fact of removing the Asperger diagnosis.

It's probably more useful and less stigmatising to have this 'Social Communication Disorder' diagnosis - I would have appreciated being diagnosed with this more than Asperger's Syndrome, with the implication that I was autistic. Ideally though I'd like to have just had help for the problems I was having rather than being given a label. All people have varying degrees of social communication problems - it doesn't need to be a specific diagnosable condition in my opinion; it's part of the human condition! They've got themselves into a right mess as regards getting rid of the Asperger's Diagnosis though, hence this is evidently their misguided attempt to sort it out.

When they finally make their minds up on what 'condition' anyone has actually 'got', perhaps they'll let us all know!

In my opinion it demonstrates what a farce half of these diagnostic criteria really are if they keep removing and changing them! They are effectively arbitrary and meaningless.

Searching Google, in the UK:-

Type 'aspergers, forensic' into Google and it gets 30,700,000 results

Type 'aspergers, support' and it gets 865,000 results

Lol - I rest my case as regards where 'the system's' main focus is as regards Asperger's Syndrome!

www.awares.org/pkgs_files/librarydoc_623.ppt

If you want to use Google for this sort of stuff, at least do it the right way. Search news articles rather than a full web search. Make sure you do a full archive search.

Asperger forensics get's 1020.
Asperger prison - 1070
asperger support - 4,140
asperger - 12,300
football rape - 59,000
x factor - 218,000
olympics - 421,000,000

Jason.