Overdiagnosis of autism
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Question: Is autism overdiagnosed?
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Author Topic: Overdiagnosis of autism  (Read 4882 times)
GaussLaw
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« on: July 20, 2014, 11:10:40 AM »
« edited: July 20, 2014, 11:20:39 AM by GaussLaw »

As a teacher, I have noticed in recent years that more and more students have IEPs for Aspergers syndrome, which is a variant for autism.  Given the change in medical classifications, Aspergers no longer exists and is now just classified as autism.

When I was a student in high school 15 years ago, only students who never talked, had bladder control problems, and could not function in society received an autism diagnosis.  Now, it seems like it is being given out to any young child with an intense interest and social awkwardness.    

Unfortunately, I am required to give extra time for tests and give easier exams for these students.  Many of them would do just fine without an IEP.  If not, it would be due to their laziness rather than lack of ability.  

Personally, I am not a big fan of psychiatrists in general and think that they do more harm than good.  I am curious what the opinion of the forum is about this topic.
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Franzl
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« Reply #1 on: July 20, 2014, 11:16:39 AM »

Strongly agree in very many cases. It's only unfortunate that it's been abused to the point where many are sceptical even of legitimate disabilities.
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Antonio the Sixth
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« Reply #2 on: July 20, 2014, 11:17:36 AM »

Maybe in the US, but definitely not in France (and probably not in the rest of Europe as well).
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IceSpear
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« Reply #3 on: July 20, 2014, 11:20:34 AM »

Yes. Autism is the new ADHD.
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Cassius
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« Reply #4 on: July 20, 2014, 11:23:48 AM »

I haven't noticed it over here, which is not to say that false diagnosis for various disorders is non-existant; far from it. Over here in my neck of the woods the big 'in demand' disorder seems to be dyslexia.
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dead0man
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« Reply #5 on: July 20, 2014, 11:31:28 AM »

Indeed.  I don't know if the "Sit down and shut up!" method would work on all of them, but it would certainly work on some.
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Filuwaúrdjan
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« Reply #6 on: July 20, 2014, 11:50:06 AM »

There's a definite overdiagnosis of male autism...
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politicallefty
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« Reply #7 on: July 20, 2014, 12:15:16 PM »

There's a definite overdiagnosis of male autism...

That's what I was thinking as well. The stats I found has the rate at 1 in 42 for males and 1 in 189 for females. I can believe the female rate, but it's the male rate that seems wildly high. No one seems to have a legitimate medical reason as to why the rate has been climbing so much in recent years (and I don't want to hear anything about the debunked and absurdly stupid notion that the cause is vaccines).

As already mentioned, it is indeed the new ADHD. My dad even admitted that the way he was in elementary school would have almost assuredly been diagnosed as such. I think many diagnosed cases of that are just boredom.
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Maxwell
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« Reply #8 on: July 20, 2014, 12:18:49 PM »

Absolutely. It basically means "socially awkward" at this point. As someone who has a family member who is very severely autistic, it's very insulting when I see kids with some odd quirks thrown under the same umbrella.
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Snowstalker Mk. II
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« Reply #9 on: July 20, 2014, 12:23:27 PM »

What I've read suggests that Al is right; male autism is over-diagnosed, female autism probably under-diagnosed.
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Tetro Kornbluth
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« Reply #10 on: July 20, 2014, 12:48:33 PM »

As a teacher, I have noticed in recent years that more and more students have IEPs for Aspergers syndrome, which is a variant for autism.  Given the change in medical classifications, Aspergers no longer exists and is now just classified as autism.

That's the reclassification as done by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder 5 (better known as DSM5), which was published two years ago and whose alterations, not just in regards to Aspergers, have been... controversial, even by the standards of the DSM, a notoriously controversial book. The whole affair about its publication in the US led to the National Institute of Mental Health to reject the document and place its own guidelines for mental health treatment. I don't know if Aspergers is included in the latter* but it would surprise me if it weren't. That's right, for the past year at least US health institutions can and do recognize two different taxonomies of mental illness. Read into that what you will.

(* - the main division was between, as always, purely behavioral diagnosis a la the DSM or supposedly biochemical ones... but very little of those exist anyway as well as the other hoary perennial of discreet categories of mental illness versus approaches that see mental 'issues' in terms of spectrums)

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But that doesn't answer which is the correct diagnosis?. I assume you aren't arguing "X is really much worse than Y therefore Y doesn't really exist (or worse, X doesn't exist because Y doesn't either)"?

Being diagnosed with a 'mental condition' which includes Aspergers in certain cases in Ireland alters one's opportunity in access to healthcare, education, insurance and employment among other things. Yet both my experience and statistics tell me that is somewhat necessary for a lot of people given the complications that arise, people diagnosed with Autistic spectrum disorders are more likely to suffer from depression, anxiety, unemployment, and homelessness among other things.

Note that btw, I hold this to be an entirely separate issue from whether Autism 'exists' or not. As if that's really important.

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Well, that's an issue of the educational establishment. Not to mention parents.

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Distrusting psychiatrists is a good idea but I think you have to an eliminative materialist on the issue of 'folk psychology' (what is laziness anyway?), well perhaps not a strict materialist but certainly an eliminativist.

Also Al is correct
There's a definite overdiagnosis of male autism...
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Tetro Kornbluth
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« Reply #11 on: July 20, 2014, 12:55:00 PM »

Absolutely. It basically means "socially awkward" at this point. As someone who has a family member who is very severely autistic, it's very insulting when I see kids with some odd quirks thrown under the same umbrella.

So basically you are arguing that 'I don't think weird people are weird enough to be considered weird because they are not like one member of my friend'? I mean, fair enough, if you treat a condition like autism as a enclosed box or list that everyone needs to meet in order to be diagnosed despite the clear damaging silliness of such a strategy.

Obviously though special needs money should go where it needs to, and autism, whether aspergers or low-functioning or anything in between, is the childhood condition de jour at the moment so....

I'll add here, what's interesting about Aspergers was the social identification that has come with the condition so much so that people actually campaigned to maintain themselves as diagnosed as having a mental condition. A strange charge against a document that was originally designed to keep psychiatry together and more open and transparent (LOL) after the homosexuality wars of the 1970s (it was a 'mental condition' once).
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Anti Democrat Democrat Club
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« Reply #12 on: July 20, 2014, 12:57:11 PM »

Absolutely.

I would know. I was one of those "misdiagnoses" and it wound up giving me self confidence issues that I never really got over. To this day I still can't tell if anyone in high school actually liked me or was just playing the "pity the special ed kid" game like I was some sort of zoo animal.
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Tetro Kornbluth
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« Reply #13 on: July 20, 2014, 12:57:42 PM »

There's a definite overdiagnosis of male autism...

That's what I was thinking as well. The stats I found has the rate at 1 in 42 for males and 1 in 189 for females. I can believe the female rate, but it's the male rate that seems wildly high. No one seems to have a legitimate medical reason as to why the rate has been climbing so much in recent years (and I don't want to hear anything about the debunked and absurdly stupid notion that the cause is vaccines).

How do you know they aren't just, you know, better at finding cases*? Why is 1 in 42 necessarily absurd? More people are afraid of Spiders (which is very common, especially in Women) yet in my part of the world at least, Spiders are totally harmless annoyances.

(*- Btw, this isn't what I necessarily believe).

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There is very likely a genetic element to any autistic spectrum disorder. And you post on Atlas forum, so you know...
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Tetro Kornbluth
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« Reply #14 on: July 20, 2014, 12:58:23 PM »

Absolutely.

I would know. I was one of those "misdiagnoses" and it wound up giving me self confidence issues that I never really got over. To this day I still can't tell if anyone in high school actually liked me or was just playing the "pity the special ed kid" game like I was some sort of zoo animal.

I had that... except they didn't know about my diagnosis (I got no special education... inside School anyway).
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dead0man
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« Reply #15 on: July 20, 2014, 12:58:35 PM »

I'll add here, what's interesting about Aspergers was the social identification that has come with the condition so much so that people actually campaigned to maintain themselves as diagnosed as having a mental condition.
I find that quite odd too.  Some of them seem to be proud of it.  I get accepting it, I get finding comfort in knowing why you do the things you do, I don't get wearing it as a badge of honor.
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Tetro Kornbluth
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« Reply #16 on: July 20, 2014, 01:00:02 PM »

I'll add here, what's interesting about Aspergers was the social identification that has come with the condition so much so that people actually campaigned to maintain themselves as diagnosed as having a mental condition.
I find that quite odd too.  Some of them seem to be proud of it.  I get accepting it, I get finding comfort in knowing why you do the things you do, I don't get wearing it as a badge of honor.

No it doesn't, it's only a label. Nobody understands that.
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dead0man
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« Reply #17 on: July 20, 2014, 01:02:48 PM »

I certainly don't.  Probably my autism Wink
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« Reply #18 on: July 20, 2014, 01:07:55 PM »

Absolutely.

I would know. I was one of those "misdiagnoses" and it wound up giving me self confidence issues that I never really got over. To this day I still can't tell if anyone in high school actually liked me or was just playing the "pity the special ed kid" game like I was some sort of zoo animal.

I had that... except they didn't know about my diagnosis (I got no special education... inside School anyway).

Sometimes I wonder what my life would be if I was normal. I don't know about how you got your diagnosis, but I essentially got it because I was reading at the level of a middle schooler in first grade, was fixated with numbers and words, and didn't pay attention in class.

I'll always have some resentment towards them for diagnosing me. My teachers had good intentions, but they turned my blessing into a curse.
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Atlas Has Shrugged
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« Reply #19 on: July 20, 2014, 01:27:15 PM »

I have an autistic brother who lives in a group home. While he has made incredible progress, we doubt he will ever grow mentally beyond the age of ten. It annoys me that children with ADHD or social anxiety are being lumped with children like my brother, and it's only so they can be medicated. It's inflating the definition of Autism, and I fear people will treat autism less seriously as a condition as a result.
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Antonio the Sixth
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« Reply #20 on: July 20, 2014, 01:42:38 PM »

For our resident amateur psychologists, I'd like to remind that autism is a spectrum, not a single universal phenomenon. Nobody ever claims that Asperger's is the same thing as the most serious cases of autism. So, it would be nice if all the people who feel so butthurt at the idea that relatively "normal" people get "lumped together" with their very-impaired relatives would make an effort to get their facts straight first.

Thanks.
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memphis
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« Reply #21 on: July 20, 2014, 01:44:54 PM »

Obviously, psychiatric conditions are not binary. Everybody is a little depressed sometimes. Everybody has attentions problems sometimes. It's not like HIV, where a person is 100% negative or positive. The issue is not misdiagnosis (a false positive) so much as the entire paradigm for how we think of the problems is flawed.
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afleitch
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« Reply #22 on: July 20, 2014, 01:50:22 PM »

Experts, all of us, I see Smiley
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Tetro Kornbluth
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« Reply #23 on: July 20, 2014, 01:52:01 PM »

Obviously, psychiatric conditions are not binary. Everybody is a little depressed sometimes. Everybody has attentions problems sometimes. It's not like HIV, where a person is 100% negative or positive. The issue is not misdiagnosis (a false positive) so much as the entire paradigm for how we think of the problems is flawed.

Unflaw the Paradigm please.
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Napoleon
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« Reply #24 on: July 20, 2014, 02:58:37 PM »

Obviously, psychiatric conditions are not binary. Everybody is a little depressed sometimes. Everybody has attentions problems sometimes. It's not like HIV, where a person is 100% negative or positive. The issue is not misdiagnosis (a false positive) so much as the entire paradigm for how we think of the problems is flawed.

Unflaw the Paradigm please.

Where's Naso when you need him?
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