No More "Asperger's Syndrome"

I know the trolls are lining up to post "Ass-burgers is fake anyway, I met an Ass-pie once, and he was fine."

So let me say this first: If you've met an Aspie and dismissed the condition because that person "seemed fine", then please consider that what you didn't see was the countless hours of practice and stress and anxiety of being able to pretend to be that way; the habitual exhaustion from the effort of doing so; the depression and abysmal self-esteem from never, never understanding the people around you or being able to tell whether people actually like you or not. The years of teasing and abuse, the subsequent years of retrospectively realising all the other things which were teasing and abuse at the time but we couldn't tell at the time. The incessant Impostor's Syndrome, which only gets worse the higher you rise -- if you can move forward in your career. Who speak nineteen languages, but get scurvy because they forget to eat. No, seriously: people whose executive dysfunction requires the scheduling of bathing and eating, or else a rigid routine, where even slight interruptions can trigger a panic attack. The meltdowns and fear and frustration and despair.

And you don't see the ones who don't "seem fine". Who weren't as fortunate as those of us who got a series of lucky breaks and have been able to work around our disabilities and take advantage of our strengths. The ones who killed themselves in despair or ended up on the streets or were institutionalised or are housebound on antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds.

The DSMV changes to the Autism Spectrum diagnoses have been widely stated by the people writing them to be for the purpose of excluding people from being diagnosed on the spectrum. Because when people started actually looking at how many people had an ASD, it turns out to be much more than anyone thought.

Obviously it can't be because so many people were swept under the carpet for all those years, so it must be a problem with the definition. Hey, if we change the definition of Cancer to exclude any condition of the skin, that means that all those people with melanomas must be cured, right?

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/b-OSYG3TW-U/story01.htm

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