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I agree that too much is being diagnosed.
Normality is becoming tighter and everyone is strange in one way or another. And now it seems like most people could be diagnosed with something. The draft of the new DSM-V (diagnostics manual) has received critizism because even more people will fall under diagnosises than before. Many seem to believe the pharmaceutical industry is lobbying for this and is partly behind it but I haven't looked into it any more than that myself.
But of course autism can be quite serious and in need of treatment as well. It just seems like things are developing towards being not normal = being sick which is pretty disturbing also in terms of where society is heading. I think things can be a problem for someone without it needing a diagnosis or label, and there are ways to improve without it.
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On September 17 2011 00:14 Sablar wrote:
I agree that too much is being diagnosed.
Normality is becoming tighter and everyone is strange in one way or another, and now it seems like most people could be diagnosed with something. The draft of the new DSM-V (diagnostics manual) has revieved critizism because even more people will fall under diagnosis than before. Many seem to believe the pharmaceutical industry is lobbying for this and is partly behind it but I haven't looked into it any more than that myself.
But of course autism can be quite serious and in need of treatment as well. It just seems like things are developing towards being not normal = being sick which is pretty disturbing also in terms of where society is heading. I think things can be a problem for someone without it needing a diagnosis or label, and there are ways to improve without it.
It's not about labeling people as sick. It's about identifying children early on that will require special education in order to learn those behaviors that come naturally to most people. We take things like understanding facial expressions and sarcasm and jokes and appropriateness for granted. Kids in the ASD spectrum need intensive help to GET this stuff.
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On September 16 2011 22:13 rezzan wrote:
friend of mine has assburglers,OP was in same class with him, and hes sick smart when he wants to (plus side about it) yeah also anti-social is common with assburglers.
so the last time i heard from him,or any of my friends heard from him. was like... 5 months ago
hes never online he only spends his time at the Tv watching movies.
Uhhh... what? I'm inclined to believe that you're just trolling or whatever. I highly doubt that this friend of yours was in my class, and your use of "assburglers" makes me think you're just being a douche. PM me the name of this friend if you really think you're right, but until then, please don't be intentionally obnoxious. 
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On September 16 2011 23:12 Zorkmid wrote:
Dr Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory is the classic Aspergers guy.
Yeah the writers even made him like trains which, from what i understand, seems to be pretty common among people with Aspengers.
Since there are some people diagones with Aspergers here, can anyone comment on the train thing? I think that's a pretty intersting fascination to have.
(Also a pretty weird quesiton to ask probably)
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It probably is being used as a convenient diagnosis, similar to what ADHD is becoming (although I see that as worse because drugs are often prescribed unnecessarily for that I don't think they are for autism). I read an article a while ago, about how schools would push for children to be diagnosed with ADHD to diminish their own responsibility for the child's actions, so maybe Autism is taking the same route.
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On September 17 2011 00:16 Zorkmid wrote:Show nested quote +On September 17 2011 00:14 Sablar wrote:
I agree that too much is being diagnosed.
Normality is becoming tighter and everyone is strange in one way or another, and now it seems like most people could be diagnosed with something. The draft of the new DSM-V (diagnostics manual) has revieved critizism because even more people will fall under diagnosis than before. Many seem to believe the pharmaceutical industry is lobbying for this and is partly behind it but I haven't looked into it any more than that myself.
But of course autism can be quite serious and in need of treatment as well. It just seems like things are developing towards being not normal = being sick which is pretty disturbing also in terms of where society is heading. I think things can be a problem for someone without it needing a diagnosis or label, and there are ways to improve without it. It's not about labeling people as sick. It's about identifying children early on that will require special education in order to learn those behaviors that come naturally to most people. We take things like understanding facial expressions and sarcasm and jokes and appropriateness for granted. Kids in the ASD spectrum need intensive help to GET this stuff.
We're probably talking about different things. I'm thinking about 'mild' symptoms and more and more things being considered as a sickness. Autism in it's typical form includes a pretty obvious defiency in the ability to live a normal life. As long as you can live a fairly normal life with some problems (like we all have..) I just don't think it should be considered a sickness/disorder.
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On September 17 2011 00:38 Prfx wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2011 23:12 Zorkmid wrote:
Dr Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory is the classic Aspergers guy. Yeah the writers even made him like trains which, from what i understand, seems to be pretty common among people with Aspengers. Since there are some people diagones with Aspergers here, can anyone comment on the train thing? I think that's a pretty intersting fascination to have. (Also a pretty weird quesiton to ask probably)
More like an stereotype of a narcissictic personality disorder.
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My next door neighbor has autism, and I worked with an Autism clinic in North Carolina for a while. There are a lot of factors that sort of effect how autism shows up. Kids who get special help often turn out fine, still a little awkward, but with no real issues. I work with one of the kids i used to mentor or whatever at my synagogue now and if i didn't know about his condition already I would assume he was normal. Kids who have more severe cases and are mainstreamed is where problems arise. They do need special attention, its just a matter of how much and also the cost of special schooling or what-have-you. I think Autism is often over diagnosed, and the vaccine thing is stupid (vaccinate your kids, ya'll) , but it's something that needs to be looked at more closely in schools which unfortunately there is no budget for.
For the record on the trains thing- A lot of Autistic kids have something they really focus on. For my neighbor it was roller coasters.
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There's no simple litmus test for autism and I'm sure there are cases where they just got the diagnosis wrong. That's psychology for you, especially when it is a spectrum disorder like autism which by its very nature IS a catch-all for many combinations of symptoms, which are probably produced by multiple underlying disorders.
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On September 17 2011 01:52 Sablar wrote:Show nested quote +On September 17 2011 00:38 Prfx wrote:On September 16 2011 23:12 Zorkmid wrote:
Dr Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory is the classic Aspergers guy. Yeah the writers even made him like trains which, from what i understand, seems to be pretty common among people with Aspengers. Since there are some people diagones with Aspergers here, can anyone comment on the train thing? I think that's a pretty intersting fascination to have. (Also a pretty weird quesiton to ask probably) More like an stereotype of a narcissictic personality disorder.
No, I read a really cool article in the NYT about just this. You're wrong.
NYTIMES
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I have mild autism, I find it extremely hard to look into peoples eyes and randomly zone into social awkwardness without warning that leaves an entire room quiet. No matter how long I've tried to correct the problems it won't fix itself even after years of attempting to look people straight in the eye it always feels strange.
I also focus on things overly so, some years I'm obsessed with different things like say philosophers where I read everyone from Hegel to Marx to Freud to Nietchze by the time I was 15. At 17 I was reading chess every single day and knew Bobby Fischer's 10 or so opening to mid lines for black and white by heart within a week. The obsessions were almost grit my teeth obsessive, like seriously strange and intense beyond words. This left me otherworldly with my peers until college where although I was still ahead literacy wise at least I could meet some challenges.
I believe autism exists on varied levels and that mild autism really does exist. I've never been able to rid myself after years of practice of being able to execute basic social skills and trying to calm myself down from over-reading or over-obsessing about certain things. To say I view as a disadvantage is laughable, socially I may lack but my friends refer to me today as "the prophet" or "the advisor" because of my intellectual skills although when I was young I was viewed as a strange and lone wolf.
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On September 16 2011 22:12 Paperplane wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2011 21:24 Kickboxer wrote:
Call me ignorant (and I'm sure you will) but I find it rather unusual how 80% of these disorders didn't exist five decades ago. Seems like their astronomic rise is directly proportional to the number of shrinks out there... reminds me of viruses and anti-virus companies.
Ok, some people absolutely do have severe mental problems, but your average quirky kid is just that. Feeding young children with chemistry and telling them they have all kinds of disorders doesn't sound terribly constructive.
They actually didn't exist 5 decades ago. Autism and asperger have been recently discovered, before they thought the children were just retarded. Show nested quote +I don't know about asperger and autism, but I can tell you from personal experience that you can treat moderate to severe depression with nothing but a good dose of martial arts (discipline), music and fresh air. Oh boy, this is so wrong I don't know where to begin. Those all HELP treat depression,you can't treat severe depression with just those 3.
They were not recently dicovered, but in the past you could be diagnosed with autism only if you lacked any way of meaningful verbal communication. Nowadays even slight (compared to "real" autism) social retardation is often considered autism (on the autism spectrum, mostly diagnosed as Asperger's).
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I don't care so long as people with Asperger's Syndrome don't park in disabled parking, if you will.
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Yeah you're right. I should've said like the definition of autism has evolved a lot during the years. Our view on autism now and 50 years ago are worlds apart.
Interesting quote for the topic:
Source: http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Nature-Autism-Aspergers-Disorder/dp/1843108143
Our best guess is that they occur in about 30 to 40 of every
10,000 people. Because we now have trained a generation of
professionals who know how to recognize them, and because we
are now counting even very mild cases, we know of more cases
than we did years ago. This raises the question: Is there an
epidemic of new cases occurring (is the incidence rising), or does it
just look like there is an epidemic because we are finding
previously overlooked cases (no change in prevalence)? This
question is widely debated by researchers and parents today. My
best guess, and I want to make sure you know this is just a guess, is
that because we are better at finding and accurately diagnosing
these disorders, it just looks like an epidemic. If my guess is correct
then the rise in newly diagnosed cases will level out in the next
few years as we finish picking up the previously overlooked ones,
and more completely identify the new ones. The truth of the
matter is that at this time no one knows the answer for sure.
However, there are several large studies underway which, so far,
support my “guess” that there is no true epidemic.
I don't know if there's over diagnosis or not, but if you include the very mild cases there's just a ton of people with ASD.
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the problem with this kind of thinking is that people might not take a real autism diagnosis as seriously. I think it is better to be over-diagnosed rather than under-diagnosed.
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So you are basically complaining that you had aspergers before it was cool and now you are not so special anymore?
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It's a dimension, not a category. Therefore... everyone has autism. The degree varies.
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Autism is modern psychology's schizophrenia. Look at all the medical literature in the late 1800s and early 1900s, people were obsessed with schizophrenia, calling it the "mental plague of the modern world." It slowly went out of fashion to be doing research with it, and it was relegated to the back shelves of science. Nowadays we have autism, a "syndrome" that exists in the gaps of our knowledge regarding the inner workings of the human mind. It's as fashionable as schizophrenia ever was, and just as inane, other than functioning as scientific fodder for the production of PhD dissertations.
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I dont know, where i go to school the only people who have autism are really different, its noticeable for sure. Maybe im jaded, but the statistic seems right to me.
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On September 17 2011 07:07 BalancedBreakfast wrote:
the problem with this kind of thinking is that people might not take a real autism diagnosis as seriously. I think it is better to be over-diagnosed rather than under-diagnosed.
That's why Asperger's is defined as "high-functioning autism". Many (most) people with Asperger's live normal lives, they just appear to be a little odd.
"low-functioning autism" are the type you are calling "real autism".
Autism at its core is a social impairment, so all degrees of social impairment have to be covered by it. Whether you don't make eye contact well or you can barely talk and when you do you stutter every word and can't pronounce half the words right and hold your hands at odd angles, you're autistic either way.
Autism has this stigma with it that you have to be a drooling retard slurring every word and walking with your hands at odd angles to be autistic. That really isn't true.
On September 17 2011 00:16 Zorkmid wrote:Show nested quote +On September 17 2011 00:14 Sablar wrote:
I agree that too much is being diagnosed.
Normality is becoming tighter and everyone is strange in one way or another, and now it seems like most people could be diagnosed with something. The draft of the new DSM-V (diagnostics manual) has revieved critizism because even more people will fall under diagnosis than before. Many seem to believe the pharmaceutical industry is lobbying for this and is partly behind it but I haven't looked into it any more than that myself.
But of course autism can be quite serious and in need of treatment as well. It just seems like things are developing towards being not normal = being sick which is pretty disturbing also in terms of where society is heading. I think things can be a problem for someone without it needing a diagnosis or label, and there are ways to improve without it. It's not about labeling people as sick. It's about identifying children early on that will require special education in order to learn those behaviors that come naturally to most people. We take things like understanding facial expressions and sarcasm and jokes and appropriateness for granted. Kids in the ASD spectrum need intensive help to GET this stuff.
Exactly. If you have autism you aren't sick, and most medications won't do shit to help you. It's not like they're trying to sell you drugs or anything.
They're just trying to identify children for special programs that TEACH children how to act (because autistic children don't understand interaction without teaching usually whereas other children know it instinctively).
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EPT
