> Say what you want about Asperger's, but my son has autism ...
Yes, but you're mixing different things. Autism is a category that includes a "Rain Man" level of functioning, but Asperger's was a diagnosis du jour that picked out brighter-than-normal kids, plus a raft of historical figures including Albert Einstein, in a way that made it seem like an attractive diagnosis, such that now, we have people objecting, saying, "No! I'm an Aspie and I don't care what you psychologists say!"
Such a thing has never happened before -- there has never been a reverse stigma to a mental illness diagnosis. When psychologists saw people lining up to get this cool new diagnosis, they knew they had gone too far, so they started a process to remove Asperger's from the diagnostic manuals before their credibility was further eroded.
Remember when you read about Asperger's that psychologists, who have every reason to hold onto established diagnoses, couldn't wait to get rid of Asperger's and the embarrassment it caused them.
I am a guy that is probably an aspie, but recently I decided to stop using that label (or any other label).
There is a sort of "aspie boom" and now everyone is a aspie, and claiming (rightfully or not) to be one makes people think you are a narcissistic or egoistical liar instead.
What I do is just try to fix my social problems as I can, and say sorry when I do something bad (that happily, is becoming more and more uncommon after I learned that Asperger's existed, plainly because it helped me become self aware of what exactly I was doing wrong that piss off other people).
Also recently I started to think that maybe almost everyone of the MBTI type INTP (and some INTJ) are aspies (not that they have a disorder, but in their sense that their normal behavior gets labelled as a disorder symptom), but that idea is too new on my head for now, I did not dwelled too much on it.
I agree with all of this, as I get to see it online even now. My concern is with the idea that there will yet be a "day of reckoning" when the rest of the ASDs must also be termed fad diagnoses, which seems to be the implication from the wording you used.
> My concern is with the idea that there will yet be a "day of reckoning" when the rest of the ASDs must also be termed fad diagnoses, which seems to be the implication from the wording you used.
No, not possible. That would be as likely as schizophrenia being labeled a fad diagnosis, or seriously questioned as to its reality. The reason that cannot happen is there are a handful of real physical ailments, ailments rooted in genetics and body chemistry, not just mental illness. I'm saying that "real" mental illnesses are actually behavioral symptoms of physical ailments. If you cure the physical disease, the mental symptoms will go also.
Schizophrenia, bipolar syndrome, autism and a handful of other conditions aren't fads, they're physical diseases with behavioral symptoms. On the other hand, purely mental illnesses whose diagnosis relies entirely on the opinion of a clinical psychologist and that have no associated physical properties or diagnostic indicators, like Asperger's, that's a different story -- that's an obvious area for abuse by mental health practitioners.
Eventually there will be a day of reckoning in which conditions like autism, schizophrenia and bipolar syndrome will be scientifically understood, and when that happens, psychiatry and psychology will take an entirely new form.
This is why President Obama recently announced a brain initiative rather than a mind initiative -- people are becoming distrustful of claims about mind diseases.
I think I actually would argue that it should be possible for a neural net in an otherwise physically-fine human brain to form various psychoses but I can definitely seek how a brain injury or deformation would be considered something different.
Yes, but you're mixing different things. Autism is a category that includes a "Rain Man" level of functioning, but Asperger's was a diagnosis du jour that picked out brighter-than-normal kids, plus a raft of historical figures including Albert Einstein, in a way that made it seem like an attractive diagnosis, such that now, we have people objecting, saying, "No! I'm an Aspie and I don't care what you psychologists say!"
Such a thing has never happened before -- there has never been a reverse stigma to a mental illness diagnosis. When psychologists saw people lining up to get this cool new diagnosis, they knew they had gone too far, so they started a process to remove Asperger's from the diagnostic manuals before their credibility was further eroded.
Remember when you read about Asperger's that psychologists, who have every reason to hold onto established diagnoses, couldn't wait to get rid of Asperger's and the embarrassment it caused them.