4 ms·

In DSM-V they did the contrary. In DSM-IV, things like Asperger's, PDD-NOS, etc existed. Now, with V, it is all under the same umbrella: ASD ('Autism Spectrum D

• pas 5y ago
  The DSM is ... well, it's a many-purpose compendium, but one of them is diagnosing people to get them a starting point. For insurance claims, for looking for specialists, etc. But it's certainly not in itself an expert manual. (While yes it is, but it's really not. Because it necessarily has to exclude the outlier cases, so it intentionally limits its own scope, focusing on the most common symptoms, and general descriptions of them. Which is very hard for psychological phenomena.) And it was because it seems those are all caused by the same underlying biology, so they are the same disorder with differing levels of severity in their symptom categories. (Social/language and restricted repetitive behaviors.)
  • oaktrout 5y ago
    To add to the above, my understanding is that classifying autism spectrum disorders into subcategories (eg aspergers) didn't seem to provide much benefit and it made things more difficult to understand. At this point all of our limited interventions are similar and are focused on strengthening social skills, which applies whether you have aspergers or pervasive developmental disorder. This may change again if we find benefit in subclassification (e.g. a treatment that benefits aspergers patients only).