Another "Asperger's Dropped from Revised Diagnosis Manual"

That kid had something else besides Aspergers. It something to describe socially how interact with others and how educationally how they learn. My kid is not violent or have underlying anger. Rude, sometimes yes. But that IS because he has Aspergers. This whole thing really makes M. angry that the media tries to explain someone's irrational behavior and now my kid is crazy. Please don't use the whole " I know people with Aspergers" number. It's right along with the " I have black friends" comment. Do some research. Aspbergers kids are not violent. If they are, they have other issues. They are huge rule followers. If anything they wouldn't touch a gun because it wasn't part of the rules.

If someone goes batshit crazy because the name of their learning or sensory processing diagnosis changes, they have an undiagnosed psychological issue that wasn't addressed.

It's not their identity, it's a label that helps them understand WHY their brain works the way it does. My son is on the spectrum, and he is not his diagnosis. If someone is THAT wrapped up in their diagnosis label as their identity, then they have other issues that are a problem. Moving a label from one page of a book to another page, or taking it out of a book and putting it in another one will not affect how the child sees themselves. They are who they are and their brains work how they work.

To calm your mind, read "Thinking in Pictures" by Temple Grandin. People on the autism spectrum have emotions like everyone else, but they tend to be more analytical. The processing system for sensory input is not operating properly. It is a neurological issue (wiring), NOT a psychological(personality) issue. As a rule, they don't go shoot-em-up crazy - they have tantrums, in the moment, because their brains experience overload and they can't process.

I am so pissed at the "get the story first, damn the facts" media and others, for throwing the Aspie label out as if it had something to do with the CT shooting. From what I understand, the man had deeper issues. Now the Autism community has to deal with some nutjob being connected with them, as if their current challenges weren't enough already.

I'm sorry, Kozmoma but you and many many others are making the same mistake with regard to trying to understand HOW SUCH A HORRIBLE THING COULD HAPPEN.

And that mistake is:

**You are all trying to find LOGIC, where there IS no logic.**

Some of you are trying a little too hard.

Give your brilliant mind a rest, girl. Enjoy simple things you don't have to think about so much, ok? It's CHRISTMAS for Chrissake!

:(

Oh for god sake! No one thinks of their diagnosis as their identity! I wish Riley was around she could tell you how many times and ways ADD has evolved.

You have symptoms, you have a diagnosis and you have a name and personality, only the latter define you!

____________________________
Oh my son is PDD and a fair few of his friends are considered aspergers though there are few differences between them behaviorally. Ask my son who he is and he will tell you Andy and if they change the name of his diagnosis he will still tell you he is Andy.

What about ADD, ADHD, ODD, PDD, dyslexia, sensory processing disorder, learning disabilities, social disabilities, etc. You add up all the kids with those, then we potentially have most of the school population being "set apart." Most of the school population J. waiting to get revenge, where it all started.

STOP trying to figure this out. Stop trying to reason this in your head. Stop trying to understand why, how this could happen. There will never be a proper WHY, for madmen. We will simply never know.

Remember when 30 years ago, people thought you could get AIDS from a toilet seat? Less then 100 years ago, lobotomies were a form of therapy. We LEARN about diseases and illnesses, and change how we diagnose and view them. This is a part of progress, and you are freaking out about something so small.

He was a 20 year old man, who has a name that we should forget. He is that name. He is that person. He is a murderer, he is evil. He is a terrible excuse for a human, that happened to be diagnosed with something completely unrelated in the past. He is nothing more then a cold blooded killer. He is NOT an autistic man that killed people. He is an EVIL man, that killed people.

The APA is for clinical purpose. I don't think it is about identity issues.

There are J. too many stories about Adam Lanza. A pastor's son went to Fox News about how his mother was thinking about committing him and then the pastor said it was J. a hearsay. It seems like everyone is trying to show proof that he had mental illness and that the mother refused to see it.

Today, Lanza's hairdresser said Adam never made small talks with him. His mother did the talking. He looked down while getting haircuts. There are a lot of kids with sensory issues and they don't like to get haircuts so does it mean they may turn into killers.

What makes M. upset is that people are thinking autism is mental
illness. Autism is not mental illness. There is no official statement, J. speculation from relatives and neighbors. Then, there are some parents blaming the mother. If you don't have a special needs child you don't know what's like to raise him/her on a daily basis. You don't know that you have to fight with the school district on services such as social skills, speech therapy, occupational therapy. If your child needs more therapies do you think the school is willing to provide it? My experience is that you can get services if you have a special education lawyer and how many families can afford attorney fees? I think the mom did everything she could to help him but something set him off.

Where was the father? They were divorced but the father lives nearby. Did he spend time with the son?

PS- I know I am not J. answering your question about identity.

No. So far the info is that his mother was about to take conservatorship of him and he was afraid he would be committed. The school was where his mom spent volunteer time and he was jealous. This is still evolving.

Even if you were right, and your not, you can't fix this. You can't out think it or change the APA. You can be loving to your Aspie in your life and try to encourage love and acceptance of all people.

Unto to us a Child is born... Read Luke chapter 2. Find a bright Light in this season.

The APA doesn't "know best."

BUT, removing the Asperger's title does get us one step closer to embracing the SPECTRUM view of autism.

Regardless...the US needs a better mental health care system.

http://thebluereview.org/i-am-adam-lanzas-mother/

I think there may be something to what you're saying, but I don't really see it that way.

The DSM does not exist to confer identities. It exists as a framework for diagnoses and treatment. And these are different. There are a lot of identities that don't warrant treatment. If something's in the DSM, that's a way of saying "We should try to treat and cure this. We should try to make it go away." For people who might be on the very, very high-functioning edge of the autistic spectrum, one could argue -- and I think you are arguing -- they don't need to be "fixed." We, in our society, really do not need to be invading every Department of Mathematics,* at every university, and trying to train the people there to be politicians and salespeople and party animals.

Redefining the spectrum as strictly autistic takes the highest-functioning cohort out of the spectrum; it respects their right to J. be who they are.

I am aware that there's a whole community of people who have coalesced around the Aspie identity, and I do see where you're coming from. For people whose capacity for social connection is already fragile, removing the name for their identity from the discourse could be harmful. I get that. But I think categorizing it as warranting treatment is probably more harmful in the end.

And (I think you know this too), I am sure, sure, sure, sure, sure that the removal of Asperger's from the DSM did not cause Adam Lanza to "snap." He may be a tragic reminder that there's a higher incidence of schizophrenia among people on the spectrum. Or he may have been psychotic all along, and it J. echoed the characteristics of Asperger's. We'll never know.

Finally, I think people have been unnecessarily harsh on this thread. Kozmoma is groping for answers J. like everyone else. It's a legitimate question even if you don't agree with the premise.

* And yeah, I KNOW that most, the vast majority, of mathematicians do not have Asperger's/ASD. I was J. using it as an example of one profession around which Aspies coalesce.

Why is it that when a person goes off their rocker and hurt others some people in the community say oh he was autistic or had a mental illness. This lumps all people with mental illnesses in together saying that anyone of them could be a mass muderer. This is not the case. Are we looking for an explaination to explain things are are unexplainable? Is this what makes us feel better? I feel for those families. I can't explain what happened or why. It was tragic. I see it as being something that is evil, something that can't be explained away by saying that person had a mental illness. Doing so will make people afraid of anyone with a mental illness and make them shy away from people with any sort of diagnosis. What would it do to those people then? J. wondering? J. saying. We can question all we want and we will never have the answers, only speculations. We J. need to love those around us the best we can for as long as we can.

The redefined the diagnosis in the new book. It is still there but since there are so many different and conflicting symptoms they did away with a general term and redefined it to be more specific. That's all the DSM-5 did. All the social behavioral is under one umbrella but better organized.

A few co-workers and I had a similar talk, although not necessarily as bothered as you about changing the classification. Although I get that some people with Asperger's may not want to be grouped with other people with autism, they actually were within the old codes as well. I don't think the new codes are in any way belittling. Of course, I don't know how most "Aspies" feel about this.
However, I don't think its reasonable to put this totally on the APA. Sure, they probably should have, and did, consider it, but they didn't remove the word from these kids/people's vocabulary. I think most likely, it will effect kids who have not yet been diagnosed and will therefore be classified under the new DSM.
So, not to really answer your question, I think the new system is an improvement. I once heard that 20% of kids diagnosed with autism/PPD will no longer fit the criteria in 2 years. In one way, thats awesome, intervention is working. In another way, there needs to be modification to the classification system and ways for the right intervention to get to kids without necessarily being labelled as Autistic (if its incorrect) From what I understand, some people being diagnosed as Aspies, really should not have been within that Autism label, which they techniquely were.

I don't agree that Aspergers, PDD-NOS, ect should be removed and J. called ASD. In the case of Aspergers's in particular, the people do not have speech delays and are usually not diagnosed until at least 5 and sometimes not until they are teens or adults. It J. goes to show nuerological conditions and mental illnesses are defined according the the times in which we live and right now, the DSM gurus seem to feel that this would be best although I do not agree.

Here are my thoughts--Do we really know what happened? Does the media tell us everything? Right after the shooting, the news reported there were several suspects, so how did they dismiss that during the same morning? They didn't have time to check fingerprints or find out if all the victims were shot with Adam's gun. Witnesses had reported seeing more than one man in black outside the building. Could it have been a set up? I don't know, and the thing is we know so very little and people's minds are coming up with all kinds of 'answers' as to what happened, but we really don't have enough information, and maybe we never will.