11:50pm June 29, 2014

No longer have AS?

I’d love to know people’s opinions about this.

If you simply go by the diagnostic criteria, is it possible to become cured, or to outgrow asperger syndrome?

To be diagnosed with AS you need to meet this criteria:

“The disturbance causes clinically significant impairments in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.”

So if you had these impairments when you were younger, but no longer are affected to a clinically significant degree, would you still be clinically diagnosable? If you’re not, does that mean AS is curable or possible to outgrow?

What do you think is actually meant by “clinically significant impairments”? I’d be really interested to know if people who no longer think they’re disabled, think they do or don’t meet this criteria.

The similar criteria for autism is:

“(II) Delays or abnormal functioning in at least one of the following areas, with onset prior to age 3 years:
(A) social interaction
(B) language as used in social communication
© symbolic or imaginative play”

According to this criteria, does it mean you could be diagnosed as autistic if you had delays as a kid, but are no longer affected to a clinically significant degree? Would that mean you can “outgrow” AS but not autism?

What do you think the wording for the criteria should be?

I don’t really give a crap for the wording of criteria most of the time, because criteria just aren’t my cup of tea for how to describe something.

But IMO they don’t have criteria appropriate for adults. They just don’t. Some adults manage to keep the criteria their whole lives, and that’s fine. But other adults move on to more nuanced criteria that are not in there. And yes they are still autistic.

Many DSM things have a code for "residual”, like I know people who were diagnosed with “residual autism in an adult” back in the day, who would now just be diagnosed with autism. Residual would be one tidy way of handling situations where people still clearly have traits but have moved beyond the criteria of something.

I don’t like it. The idea of autism residue doesn’t sit right with me. But it would work.

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