Aspies who appear to have classic Autism

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Yellow-bellied Woodpecker
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23 Dec 2015, 12:27 pm

Has anyone ever observed this, my friend at my Aspergers social group said he has met people who have very severe classic Autism who have been diagnosed with AS, he has also met people who have Autism not AS who appear like they have mild AS. I have not met as many aspies and auties as he has, most aspies I've met, while they appear noticeably different and seem like they may have some issues do not appear to me to be obviously autistic. So I'm just wondering, has anyone ever met anyone who appeared to be obviously Autistic or even severely handicapped, who has a diagnosis of Aspergers?



Soyer
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23 Dec 2015, 12:44 pm

iirc the biggest diagnostic difference between aspergers and autism was learning language. If they speak well they're likely to be diagnosed with aspergers even if they need a lot of support. That's probably why they took it out of the DSM.

(someone please correct me if I'm wrong)



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23 Dec 2015, 12:55 pm

You are right Soyer. That is why Asperger's was removed from the DSM V in 2013. In Asperger's children did not have a delay in learning language and they felt that that was not enough of a difference for Asperger's to merit it's own diagnosis. So in the US it is all Autism Spectrum Disorder now and it just varies in degrees.

But I think that people can really vary by how they present. I know that some people present severely and do so always and consistently. I also know for myself though, there are times when I get much more Autistic than other times. Even within the span of a single day things could happen where one person might see me and think I am NT. Then later another person might see me and just think I am a little different. And in an other part of the day someone else might see me and think, she is classically Autistic. So how I present, even as someone on the Aspie sided of the Spectrum, can radically change at any moment depending on the circumstances. I think that a lot of so called "high functioning" Spectrumites can understand this very well. We have plenty of times when we are not "high functioning" at all.


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darkphantomx1
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23 Dec 2015, 2:26 pm

Yeah well anybody who knows autism knows that its very diverse. Iv'e known a ton of mofos with autism A LOT. It's all very diverse.

Although iv'e yet to meet one who's good with the ladies. When it comes to the ladies, most of us are pretty bad. Sorry



Last edited by darkphantomx1 on 23 Dec 2015, 2:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

skibum
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23 Dec 2015, 2:27 pm

What's a mofo?


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darkphantomx1
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23 Dec 2015, 2:28 pm

skibum wrote:
What's a mofo?



It means someone intelligent in a distinctive kind of way. Us aspies are mofos.



neilson_wheels
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23 Dec 2015, 2:32 pm

darkphantomx1 wrote:
skibum wrote:
What's a mofo?



It means someone intelligent in a distinctive kind of way. Us aspies are mofos.


Skibum, he's not being straight with you, a mofo is rudeness, first word mother, you can guess the rest.



skibum
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23 Dec 2015, 2:34 pm

Oh, got it! Thanks for telling me. I now know that is a word I should not add to my vocabulary. :D


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23 Dec 2015, 2:49 pm

It's the "hip hop" version of a common incestuous curse.



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23 Dec 2015, 4:30 pm

It's like how n***a means the n word or how fudge means the f word so people say those words to mean those bad words.

I was even saying BS in Spanish in Spanish class and our teacher put a stop to it. He said he didn't want any bad language in his class in English or Spanish or in any language, I think he was saying that mainly for me but was saying it to the whole class. I remember getting in trouble at school for saying the letter F when I was eight. :lol: Hey I didn't say f*uck, I said F. :lol: Then I learned the letter F was a bad word when you mean the f word. No one ever told me that, I was only told the word f*uck was bad. Very literal.


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Ettina
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24 Dec 2015, 8:44 am

Well, with regards to the lack of language delay criterion, technically echolalia could meet the criteria. (Words by age 2, sentences by age 3 - doesn't require the language be normal in form or meaningful.) So a person who speaks only in echolalia could qualify for Aspergers if they started echolalia before they turned 2.



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24 Dec 2015, 9:21 am

skibum wrote:
You are right Soyer. That is why Asperger's was removed from the DSM V in 2013. In Asperger's children did not have a delay in learning language and they felt that that was not enough of a difference for Asperger's to merit it's own diagnosis. So in the US it is all Autism Spectrum Disorder now and it just varies in degrees.


It was removed because it was felt Aspergers was over diagnosed and parents were using the label to get underserved benifits costing school districts and insurance companies money. It is not me saying that, it is the people who removed it that said it.
Why Claim Asperger's is Overdiagnosed? - Psychology Today
Quote:
Susan Swedo, chair of the DSM-5 neurodevelopmental disorders workgroup, said (link is external) in May that many people who identify with Asperger’s Syndrome “don't actually have Asperger's disorder, much less an autism spectrum disorder.”
David Kupfer, chair of the task force charged with the DSM revisions, blurted (link is external) to the New York Times in January: “We have to make sure not everybody who is a little odd gets a diagnosis of autism or Asperger Disorder. It involves a use of treatment resources. It becomes a cost issue.” (This was startling to those who’d missed the memo that declared costs and treatment resources the responsibility of the APA. Which was everyone.)
Catherine Lord, the director of the Institute for Brain Development at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, and another member of the workgroup, told (link is external) Scientific American in January, “If the DSM-IV criteria are taken too literally, anybody in the world could qualify for Asperger's or PDD-NOS... We need to make sure the criteria are not pulling in kids who do not have these disorders.”
Paul Steinberg, a D.C. psychiatrist, declared in a New York Times op-ed (link is external) in January that “with the loosening of the diagnosis of Asperger, children and adults who are shy and timid, who have quirky interests like train schedules and baseball statistics, and who have trouble relating to their peers” are erroneously and harmfully labeled autistic. He blamed a 1992 Department of Education directive that “called for enhanced services" for children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders: “The diagnosis of Asperger syndrome went through the roof."
Dr. Bryna Siegel, a developmental psychologist at the University of California, San Francisco, told a Daily Beast reporter (link is external) in February that she “undiagnoses” nine of out ten students with so-called Asperger’s. Siegel was a member of the panel responsible for the inclusion of Asperger’s in the DSM-IV, which the reporter cited to me in a phone call as evidence of Seigel's objectivity: implicitly, Seigel is critiquing her own work. But that same journalist made no mention in the piece of Dr. Seigel’s history as an expert witness for school districts fending off families’ claims for those “enhanced services,” and the obvious conflict of interest (as well as the selection bias in her client pool) this represents. In October, she told New York magazine (link is external) that she undiagnoses six out of ten. That's quite a shift in eight months. Hope it was evidence-based.


The conventional wisdom that the Aspergers diagnosis was removed in the DSM 5 for legitimate scientific reasons needs to die.



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25 Dec 2015, 7:58 pm

ASPartOfMe wrote:
The conventional wisdom that the Aspergers diagnosis was removed in the DSM 5 for legitimate scientific reasons needs to die.


Even if there were other motivations as well, the legitimate scientific reasons are still just as valid.



ASPartOfMe
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25 Dec 2015, 9:41 pm

Ettina wrote:
ASPartOfMe wrote:
The conventional wisdom that the Aspergers diagnosis was removed in the DSM 5 for legitimate scientific reasons needs to die.


Even if there were other motivations as well, the legitimate scientific reasons are still just as valid.


When money is a reason one should be very very suspicious that the other reasons given are given to mask the true financial reasons.

The part of the article I did not quote noted there was no scientific evidence that Aspergers was bieng over disgnosed.


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28 Dec 2015, 5:08 pm

it seems to me that an awful lot of the DSM and psychiatry as a whole has always been made up of a lot of very vague, unsubstantiated, unscientific diagnostic characteristics (e.g., refrigerator moms?). Money and politics clearly factor in here, even though it's really pretty short-sighted to not think about how a lot of people with untreated ASD might wind up being a burden on the welfare state or prison system instead of being at least partly employed.

Hard science like genetics and functional MRIs are starting to find physical, verifiable tests for autism, instead of questionnaires with widely varying results.

Also, personality traits can change with age, adapt to changing environments, and learn new ways of perceiving and acting. The shy, quirky nerd can take acting classes for confidence, share her love of bugs only with other enthusiasts, and learn more sociable ways to act. She can also be perfectly happy the way she is, magnifying glass and bug net in hand. What we autistics have is a whole order of magnitude different: we don't know how to adapt, we're unaware of the social rules we're meant to learn, and the world is an obstacle course of painful sensory stimuli and social ostracism. Even the oddest nerd can find a community; to be autistic is to spend your life searching for a home. Even when we learn to adapt, it is a cognitive act, not an instinctive one: learning scripts, memorizing facial expressions, studying books on psychology and etiquette.


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