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Reply to "Is ASD a useful label or is it we don’t know we will lump it under an umbrella term?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]NP. We get your argument but you don't seem to be getting PP's argument. That child could also easily have been a brilliant NT child without ASD.

You are awfully confident you can arm chair diagnose anyone.

[/quote]
Like I said, it's a real example for someone who already was diagnosed, I have seen more than once, and also know his mother.  I did not do an armchair diagnosis, but it was pretty easy to see, non-professional that I am.

[b]My point though is that psychiatric diagnoses are real things even if we don't understand all the neurology behind them yet [/b]amd our diagnostic tools are not perfect.  There's a common thread running through each diagnosis and the symptom lists are based on that.

There has been a 40-year push to make psychiatric diagnoses more standardized and evidence-based.  This push has largely been successful and we continue to improve.  There is much less subjectivity and better treatments than there used to be.  It's not anywhere near the rigor we can achieve with physical illnesses, but that is no reason to blow off the entire field, which has helped millions of people and saved lives. [/quote]

No.  Psychiatric conditions are real things.  Pyschiatric [i]diagnoses [/i]are not.  [/quote]
I applaud your ability to split hairs. [/quote]

I agree with the PP here.

Mental health disorders are absolutely real things.  They can be devastating.

And it's important that we are able to develop terms to describe them, and to help people connect with solutions.  But most conditions in mental health are continuum disorders meaning that they kind of bleed into each other.

My kid has severe debilitating anxiety that leads to, among other things, school refusal.  There is no question that he has a real disorder, and needs real treatment, or that his symptoms are real.  But does he have GAD, or separation anxiety, or a phobia of school or a panic disorder?  Which term describes him best?  Well, that depends on who sees him, and when they see him, and what symptoms he describes that day, or what boxes he checks on their forms.  A good psychiatrist or therapist will know to look for treatments that fit him, not just a code on a billing sheet.  Luckily, since many of the conditions overlap, it's not surprising that many of the treatments overlap too, so he can be treated consistently, even if his Dr. keeps changing what billing code they use.

So, his condition is real.  The terms we use to describe it (the diagnoses) are artificial divisions created to meet the needs of the medical profession and the insurance industry.[/quote]
Yes it's true they all bleed into each other, but that doesn't mean it's completely arbitrary. ADHD can sometimes look like anxiety, but the treatments are totally different.  GAD, panic disorder and separation anxiety can overlap, but they are also distinct diagnoses or, if you prefer, conditions.  My kid has ASD, ADHD and GAD, but definitely does not have panic disorder or separation anxiety.  In our case, it doesn't change from day to day or doctor to doctor.

If you get diagnosed with the condition of high blood pressure, which is arbitrarily defined as BP higher than 140/90, nobody has any problem with the arbitrary cutoff or argues about whether it's a diagnosis or a condition.

But when it comes to ASD, people do in fact question whether it is "real" or not.  Or as in the case of one of the PP's above, feel qualified to question whether a kid she never met has any problem at all.

[/quote]

With Blood Pressure, there is a clear method of checking and diagnosing.  ASD is a subjective checklist done by others and its easily skewed if one wants it to be.    It also discredits the kids who are moderately to severely impacted with kids mixed in with very minor things or just a bit quirky.  When you say ASD, many just assume very high functioning and quirky when the true ASD (or at least for me) are those far more impacted.[/quote]

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