According to that study, the autistic people who would be overlooked under the new guidelines happen to be those without intellectual disability and who would fit the current criteria for Asperger’s disorder or PDD-NOS. Then a peer-reviewed version of the study presented in Iceland emerged in March 2012 suggesting that the new criteria would be pretty good at excluding appropriately people who aren’t on the autism spectrum but have limited ability to capture people who are. Those findings were preliminary and controversial, but further worrisome conference reports trickled in, all suggesting that the new autism diagnostic criteria proposed for the DSM-5 would exclude a good-sized percentage of people currently diagnosed on the autism spectrum.
One alarming presentation at a January 2012 conference in Iceland claimed that only 45% of people diagnosed with Asperger’s disorder or PDD-NOS would retain an autism spectrum diagnosis under the new guidelines.
Would people like my son, diagnosed with Asperger's and whose autism includes echolalia, anxiety, motor deficits, repetitive behaviors, learning differences, and other features well beyond the social, get rolled into what looks like a flimsy, catchall not-safety net of “social communication disorders”? And what other kind of communication is there if not social?īased on early reports, the concerns were legit. What would happen to individuals whose autism doesn’t manifest in those terms as profound? The biggest concern was a new category for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)-5, social communication disorder. They worried about autistic people who are quite verbal or who have typical cognitive skills. doi:10.3389/ news broke that the autism spectrum categories of Asperger’s disorder and Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS) would get subsumed into the wider maw of a general “ autism disorder,” people worried. Barriers general education teachers face regarding the inclusion of students with autism.
Dir/floor time in engaging autism: a systematic review. Occupational therapy for autism.ĭivya K, Begum F, John SE, Francis F. Speech-language therapy for autism.Įunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. doi:10.2147/NDT.S282569Įunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Challenges surrounding the diagnosis of autism in children. DSM-5 criteria for autism spectrum disorder maximizes diagnostic sensitivity and specificity in preschool children. When that's the case, it's possible for a combination of cognitive therapy and appropriate medication to essentially eradicate the problem.
Late or disordered speech, a classic trait of autism, can be caused by many different issues ranging from apraxia of speech (a neurological disorder) to hearing loss.