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On September 16 2011 17:25 arbitrageur wrote:Show nested quote +On May 10 2011 09:27 Aeres wrote:
So, TeamLiquid, what it comes down to is this: Do you feel that Asperger's Syndrome, along with other mental disorders such as ADD, are being "overdiagosed" to try and excessively label individuals that may not even have them? I highly doubt a single individual on TL knows. You'd need a large scale study with a random and i.i.d. drawn sample of individuals diagnosed with aspergers and then appose them to the DSM criteria using objective methodology and see the extent of the discrepancy. This then has to be repeated before we can be sure there is any over-diagnosing occuring.
but he quite specificially said "do you feel, nothing to do with actual statistics, becuase they're less fun to discuss, but with how people perceive these sorts of disorders.
With that said: a thousand times yes, they're over the top, especially ADD (or, as we called it in my day, being a bit of a little shit). I'd not heard of aspergers being increasingly diagnosed at all, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was, and overly so. It's part of the "everyone is fine, equal, and there are no differences whatsoever. If you're different, you've got some disorder, and nothing is the parents' fault because it's a sacred duty" schtick going about, especially in childcare. You're not fat and slow, sports days aren't competitive, you're not thick, you're just doing the wrong subjects, and you're not an attention seeking irritating little prick because your parents don't have the slightest bit of control, you have adhd and it's all not your fault.
.. that was a little more vitriolic than I had intended, but I think anyone of my generation (mid-late twenties) has seen it happen over the course of going through education.
edit: I also realised it may sound as if I don't believe any of these disorders exist - I do, I just believe they're being vigourously misused as a scapegoat for awful parenting and teaching far too much.
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Autism is a real disorder, not bad parenting, kids being kids or merely shyness or any other silly (and offensive) thing people come up with in their fantasies.
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On September 16 2011 17:52 nepeta wrote:
arbitrageur: Aspergers and/or autism aren't diseases in the sense that aids or the cold are diseases, they are epithets applied to symptoms. Medically speaking it is called 'a condition on the scale of aspergers'. [tr from Dutch] If one were, rather crudely, take the empathy aspect of the conditions, and then take a representative reading from the human population, only the single best respondent would classify as "most emphatic", leaving the remaining respondents to be "deficient"
That's right. It's called a disorder/syndrome.
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I have only ever met 2 people that (I know) was diagnosed with aspergers syndrome (I may very well have met people that didn't tell me), and both of those were showing extremely clear signs of autism.
in my opinion there are so many problems that you can be born with that its practically impossible to be free of every single malady and diagnosis.
there are allergies, cancer, cronical problems, mental illness and in my case: dysmelia.
I bet you have never heard of that one before eh? interestingly enough I count myself lucky, why? you ask, because dysmelia is not a mental illness, congenital cancer, an allergy or something that hinders my thought-process nor anything that drastically hinders my every-day life.
it is not something that can be fixed or healed however.
dysmelia: a congenital (pre-birth) disorder referring to the limbs.
can refer to any of the following:
missing limbs (ex missing hand)
http://www.redy.info/dysmelia/images/kuva2.jpg
malformed limbs (ex feet turned wrong way)
http://www.physioms.com/images/img12531796.jpg
too many limbs (very extreme and rare example, one brain, two bodies, I would have shown a hexa-fingered hand if I had found a picture)
http://www.ayushveda.com/tipson/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/congential.jpg
in my case, I was born with no left hand. and guess what I have had the most trouble with so far in my 19 years of life:
tying my shoes.
thats right, I learned to tie my shoes in 7th grade. until then I couldn't. but today there is basicly nothing I can't do, as a matter of fact, there are some people out there driving cars using only their legs, don't ask me how they do it, I use my stump to take care of the wheel when I switch gears, thats the hardest thing I have to do when driving.
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It's more than an increase in diagnostic ability.
Enviromental factors such as increased premature birth survival rates are increasing the likely of the condition appearing.
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Also psychology has risen to a respectable field in the last few decades... Taxpayer support ... Our child is a bit odd let's go get a heavily subsidized session when before it would've costed 120 dollars.
Not sure about the validity of this as you could've just gone to a subsidized psychiatrist.
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You ask how I feel about the accuracy of diagnoses. This is an odd question, what would you learn from it and what would you do with this knowledge. I am scared of politics based on feelings rather than facts and as people pointed out before, it is very unlikely that people here have a deep insight into the field when you probably want to have a very deep insight in order to make up your mind about psychological disorders.
What really matters in the end is helping these people. You could make up the same line of logic about many disorders, lets say depression. However people do actually kill themselves and medicine can and does help these people. How important is an over diagnosis then? None whatsoever for when people use it as an excuse and you would take away this particular excuse, they will come up with another excuse. You feel that something isn't right here, I suggest that this does not matter much compared to other problems. After all it is very easy to come up with something that doesn't feel right and it is you who decides how much priority you give to it.
Finally a word about ADD. People are very fast in accusing an over diagnoses. What people rarely know though, some of these kids suffer physical pain, their mental problem establishes itself physically. These kids are so scared of school because they under perform (for example in math and because they cant concentrate much) and are bullied and blame themselves. Again the real world is much more complicated and difficult than the simple populism ADD doesn't really exist argument. And it is very difficult to have a reasonable argument going because of all the prejudice.
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Our understanding of these disorders are so limited that the field is evolving rapidly. Autism in particular is very good source of information and gives much needed glimpse into human brain and the more its studied, the 'wider' it becomes as new information is uncowered. People such as Einstein, Van Gogh and Newton had symphtoms of varying degree iirc. It is only natural that medical research may feel bumpy these days when things are moving so fast.
Research has even led some research institutes to actually try to make artificial symptoms into healthy patients to increase their intelligence.
Check these out if you are interested:
Beautiful minds - The Einstein Effect
What makes genius
Is autism a bad thing? I dont know. All i know its not black and white, every case should be treated as individual, or we might ruin next Einstein or Mozart. It is certainly not something to be taken lightly.
It is unbelievably complex and fascinating phenomena, even for us laymen i feel.
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To OP: What about environmental factors being a contributor and those environmental factors increasing? Could easily account for the increase in children born with autism/aspergers..
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On September 16 2011 20:28 Undu wrote:
To OP: What about environmental factors being a contributor and those environmental factors increasing? Could easily account for the increase in children born with autism/aspergers..
It is common opinion that there must be some environmental factor because genetics alone can't explain the rise in autism rates, although there is clearly a genetic component. Other disorders continue being diagnosed at similar rates, so autism isn't a "fad diagnosis" either where someone who previously would have gotten some other diagnosis nowadays gets autism instead.
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I'm sure ADD is a legitimate concern for many people, but when I was in high school every kid (about 5 or 6) i knew who was diagnosed with ADD purposely tricked their doctor into giving them diagnosis by just saying they couldn't concentrate, and their was a list of reasons (i forget now) that if you just told the doctor he would diagnosis you with it. These kids would do this just to get the doctor to give them aderol and a couple other drugs which they would then just use them to get high or would sell them for couple bucks each to make money. The same with anti depressants though not as much, back in my school (for some kids) getting prescribed xanax or aderol was a big for them not because they needed it but because it was a steady supply of drugs to get high off of or make a quick buck.
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On September 16 2011 20:47 -Duderino- wrote:
I'm sure ADD is a legitimate concern for many people, but when I was in high school every kid (about 5 or 6) i knew who was diagnosed with ADD purposely tricked their doctor into giving them diagnosis by just saying they couldn't concentrate, and their was a list of reasons (i forget now) that if you just told the doctor he would diagnosis you with it.
Attention deficit disorder is not the same as autism. And yea I agree with your experiences, this is also something that's happening.
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On September 16 2011 21:05 Traeon wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2011 20:47 -Duderino- wrote:
I'm sure ADD is a legitimate concern for many people, but when I was in high school every kid (about 5 or 6) i knew who was diagnosed with ADD purposely tricked their doctor into giving them diagnosis by just saying they couldn't concentrate, and their was a list of reasons (i forget now) that if you just told the doctor he would diagnosis you with it. Attention deficit disorder is not the same as autism. And yea I agree with your experiences, this is also something that's happening.
ADD/ADHD is commonly refered to (here in DK) as "Alle drenge har det" which translates directly into "All boys have it" - those are definitely overdiagnosed imo, Aspergers and autism isn't really overdiagnosed here in DK is my feeling. At least those I met back when I worked at the psych. department were pretty "outstanding".
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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.
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.
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On September 16 2011 20:37 Traeon wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2011 20:28 Undu wrote:
To OP: What about environmental factors being a contributor and those environmental factors increasing? Could easily account for the increase in children born with autism/aspergers.. It is common opinion that there must be some environmental factor because genetics alone can't explain the rise in autism rates, although there is clearly a genetic component. Other disorders continue being diagnosed at similar rates, so autism isn't a "fad diagnosis" either where someone who previously would have gotten some other diagnosis nowadays gets autism instead.
It is not like Asperger's has the most stringent diagnostic criteria. And the amount of cases varies pretty highly between studies. Do you have some links to the studies about increase in autism cases. Would like to see what do they actually measure. Because based on at least on my father's perspective (he is psychiatrist) Aspergers is overdiagnosed due to extending the cutoff point of the diagnosis further and further in time.
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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.
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.
I'm sorry, but saying that you can treat severe depression with martial arts and music really sounds like some kind of hippie bullshit haha :D
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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.
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.
In case of viruses it is easily because our detection technology actually improved in last 50 years unimaginably. Similarly that is part of the reason why there is increase in psychiatric diagnoses, but in my opinion it is also because as societies get wealthier they have more resources to spend on fixing conditions that are not deadly or even severe, but still people having them suffer in one way or another. There might be also some unnecessary diagnosing, but I would not call it really major.
EDIT: Also saying that treating severe depression with martial arts and music seems to indicate you actually do not know what severe depression is. Or you are one of the rare people lucky enough to get out of severe depression this way, but that does not mean everyone is the same as you. Generalizing you own life on all people seems kind of unreasonable.
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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.
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.
Well sometimes you can't (being depressed because you see daddy beating mommy isn't cured by fresh air), and you certainly can't treat actual medical afflictions with music.
But I do agree with you that it's rather unusual that so many kids are being diagnosed ADD/ ADHD, when a generation ago, those same kids would have been diagnosed with "having the energy and attention span of a kid".
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Kickboxer wrote:
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.
Many severe depressives would laugh in your face, if only they had the emotional will to do so. They can't actually DO martial arts or get fresh air because they suffer from psychomotor retardation. For light depressives, this is probably a good idea in addition to meds because both activities release the neurotransmitters in reward centers that depressives lack. Moderate to severe depressives should be on meds A-S-A-P, lest they wish to have severe hippocampus shrinking and permanent brain damage (certain anti-depression medication promotes the growth of new neurons and is experimentally proven to reduce the amount of hippocampus shrinking in long-term depressives).
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On September 16 2011 21:56 arbitrageur wrote:
(certain anti-depression medication promotes the growth of new neurons and is experimentally proven to reduce the amount of hippocampus shrinking in long-term depressives).
Link to article? Afaik there are no medications that stimulate growth of new neural tissue, only meds that inhibit the degredation of neurons.
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EPT
