Police kills Asperger sufferer during suicide call in AZ

[anachronistic]

This has hit the autistic community very hard.

May I, as an autistic person, please ask, though, that the title of this be changed?  People do not 'suffer' from Asperger's syndrome, which doesn't even exist anymore.  Kayden identified as an autistic, trans man and I would hope that at least we can respect him in that in death, if not in life.

[sisterwives]

On 2/11/2016 at 6:03 PM, anachronistic said:

This has hit the autistic community very hard.

May I, as an autistic person, please ask, though, that the title of this be changed?  People do not 'suffer' from Asperger's syndrome, which doesn't even exist anymore.  Kayden identified as an autistic, trans man and I would hope that at least we can respect him in that in death, if not in life.

Can you explain what you mean by "Asperger's doesn't even exist anymore"? I hear the term a lot with people calling themselves that and I've never heard this before.

[ShepherdontheRock]

23 minutes ago, sisterwives said:

Can you explain what you mean by "Asperger's doesn't even exist anymore"? I hear the term a lot with people calling themselves that and I've never heard this before.

Well, in the latest DSM, Aspergers was consolidated into Autism. So, Aspergers isn't an official diagnosis anymore. But people who were diagnosed when it was often continue to identify as such.

[Gobbles]

Depends also on the country I guess. Here in Germany we mostly use ICD with children. In the recent time the term "Autism Spectrum Disorder" is used her a lot. Not sure how it will be in the next ICD. So until now Asperger's is still a valid diagnosis under ICD-10. 

I also agree with the title. 

[Whoosh]

Psychological disorders that are behaviorally defined are weird in terms of labels sometimes.   When diagnostic labels are created, we use them to identify and communicate about a certain thing.  Medical professionals and researchers use the information in order to diagnose, treat, and conduct research to better understand the thing is we are looking at.  When we diagnose something that has a clear physical or biological manifestation (i.e. broken bone, high cholesterol), it is easier to label and classify.  So, while the criteria may change or something may exist on a range, we set a cutoff and say the bone is broken or it is not broken and we go about treating it.

Autism, Aspergers, ASD, HFA, etc are not the same type of diagnosis.  The clinical manifestations are behaviorally defined.  When we use labels for things that are behaviorally defined, we still use them for pretty much the same reasons, but it is important to remember that the diagnosis or label doesn't really tell us the reason for the clinical manifestation or the root cause like it might with a broken bone.  In the past, the only real diagnostic difference in the USA between High Functioning Autism and Aspergers was timing of language acquisition.  The current thinking is that that really isn't all that useful of a distinction in terms of trying to understand the underlying cause of the behavioral pattern being discussed and researched or in terms of trying to treat any problematic clinical manifestations.  That said, medical professionals and others often didn't use the terms as the are defined in the diagnostic manuals, so there are various other ways different people might distinguish between HFA and Aspergers that don't match up to the DSM classifications

Why that matters - when trying to learn about Autism and other spectrum disorders, researchers need to keep in mind that two different root causes can result in the same clinical manifestations.  So, PKU is a disorder in the ability to digest proteins.  Today all babies are tested for PKU at birth.  Kids who have it are put on a special diet until mid childhood and develop "normally" and healthily.  Before anyone knew what PKU was, however, without the special diet these kids would have developmental delays or difficulties that would often meet the diagnostic criteria for Low Functioning Autism.  So, if I am a researcher trying to figure out if vaccinations or obstetrical complications play a role in the development of Autism, I want to exclude anyone whose showing those various characteristics for a different underlying reason (PKU), but include everyone who seems to fit or make sense in the group I am trying to describe (HFA and Aspergers).  The old thinking was that Aspergers and High Functioning Autism were two different things.  The new thinking (at least here in the USA) is that it makes more sense to look at ASD as a whole or to use research groups based on functioning level or IQ rather than divide into groups based on time of language acquisition.

Sorry to get all technical and weird.