![]() ![]() Seeing it as a form of autism, she named it based on Austrian paediatrician Hans Asperger, who had published a paper in 1944 that identified children with a specific pattern of behaviour and abilities he called “little professors”. It was included in DSM-IV, published in 1994, having come to prominence after British psychiatrist Lorna Wing, who developed the concept of an autism spectrum, coined the term. While the new framing aroused high emotions at the time, a decade on how have things evolved? Given diagnoses matter for support services, is the reconfiguration really proving the best way to help everyone who needs it across the spectrum? “The spectrum is so broad it doesn’t make much sense,” autistic scholar Temple Grandin, told the Observer last year.Īsperger’s syndrome only had one term – spanning 19 years – in the DSM (where it was called Asperger’s disorder). Previous diagnoses of Asperger’s transferred over as ASD: no one needed rediagnosis. Under DSM-5, individuals with an ASD diagnosis are given specifiers – ASD with or without intellectual or language impairment, for example – and their level of required support indicated on a scale of 1 to 3 (very substantial). Collapsed into it was Asperger’s along with autistic disorder – which could come with language and intellectual impairment and was sometimes colloquially called “classic autism” when it did – and some other related conditions. Instead of recognising Asperger’s – a social learning disability in a person who has never had any significant problems with language development and isn’t intellectually impaired – the so-called DSM-5 created the umbrella autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (“disorder” is often replaced with “condition” in the UK). It will be 10 years next month that Asperger’s syndrome was removed as an official diagnosis from the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) – psychiatry’s “bible” which heavily influences how countries including the UK make determinations. “The language police will inform you that you can’t use that term because of the link with Hans Asperger and the Nazis,” she says. Although she has also learned the hard way it is better to stick to calling herself autistic online, where she has been bullied for using Aspie. Weston says she is not trying to separate herself from other autistic people because she thinks she’s special she would much rather not have the complex struggles that come with her disability. And she is certain, based on her cognitive and language abilities, that she would have received the Asperger’s label had she been diagnosed earlier. ![]() ![]() She says using Aspie or Asperger’s just helps outsiders understand what she’s like and clears up confusion. She doesn’t have the complex learning disabilities some autistic people do and which non-autistic people can think of when they hear autism. Yet in daily life she describes herself as an “Aspie” – an informal, affectionate term for a person with Asperger syndrome. Sarah Weston, 47, received a diagnosis of autism spectrum condition in 2019. “But it is better for autistic people if we are all recognised, acknowledged and appreciated together.” “A lot of us did not want to let go originally, it was something that fitted us very nicely,” recalls the teacher turned autism advocate who runs a website called Autistic Not Weird from his home in Nottingham. But these days he just says he’s autistic. Chris Bonnello, 37, was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome in 2011.
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