Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:over diagnosed

Bite me. Kids who receive intensive therapy can improve enough to no longer eligible for a DX. It doesn't mean they're normal or that they didn't need the ASD DX. It means that they got better. It means therapy works.

My child has done some therapy, but not nearly as much as other kids I know. They are catching up at the same rate.

So?

There are good studies that show kids who get "some therapy" improve more than kids who don't get any therapy, but that kids who get intensive therapy don't improve more than kids who get "some therapy."

Do you have links to these "good" studies?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:over diagnosed

Bite me. Kids who receive intensive therapy can improve enough to no longer eligible for a DX. It doesn't mean they're normal or that they didn't need the ASD DX. It means that they got better. It means therapy works.

My child has done some therapy, but not nearly as much as other kids I know. They are catching up at the same rate.

So?

There are good studies that show kids who get "some therapy" improve more than kids who don't get any therapy, but that kids who get intensive therapy don't improve more than kids who get "some therapy."

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:over diagnosed

Bite me. Kids who receive intensive therapy can improve enough to no longer eligible for a DX. It doesn't mean they're normal or that they didn't need the ASD DX. It means that they got better. It means therapy works.

My child has done some therapy, but not nearly as much as other kids I know. They are catching up at the same rate.

I do believe therapy can help a child lose the diagnosis, but I don't believe the child is free of ASD--I believe whatever problems remain are still autism based and that that shouldn't be forgotten lest they get lost in a mire of psychiatric labels and drugs that focus on the here and now and are not developmental.

What I think is overdiagnosed is bipolar in children. I think many of those children are probably on the spectrum. Possibly the same for ADHD.

Anonymous wrote:over diagnosed

Bite me. Kids who receive intensive therapy can improve enough to no longer eligible for a DX. It doesn't mean they're normal or that they didn't need the ASD DX. It means that they got better. It means therapy works.

My 7 year old son was diagnosed with autism at age 2, but now his developmental pediatrician thinks it's actually ADHD. We were advised to keep the autism diagnosis on his record for the time being because it probably gets him more school services than he would otherwise get.

All I know is that he has issues and needs help. It's sad that kids have to have a label when anyone looking at them could tell that they need help to function in school.

Anonymous wrote:
I think doctors tend to dx based on their specialties.

I agree.

I think as kids get older, they are diagnosed based more on presenting emotional difficulties--also due to the fact that the client can articulate more--and so things like anxiety, depression, issues with boundaries, aggression, coping, etc., come out and those fit more with psychiatric diagnoses. It's a shame because the ASD issues get lost, like perspective taking, social skills issues, which need continued therapy or the "psychiatric" issues just become worse, and yet instead the direction of therapy goes to medications and psychotherapy (which is valuable in its own right but should be coupled with continued skill-building and ASD-related supports).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To me, this article just shows how difficult it really is to diagnose autism. We must accept that we are still in our infancy in understanding ASD and in our ability to diagnose it. Even Chuck Conlon, the well respected developmental ped in this area, has removed the ASD label from some kids that he has previously DXed. We must be committed to continued efforts to learn about autisms, their prognosis, and the impact of behavioral, biomedical and other therapies. I say be wary of those who claim to be experts and those who diagnose young children with 100% assuredness.

I agree.

I think unless we have genetic or blood tests there will always be some confusion. Development muddies the waters tsuch a degree that it is really hard to sort out what is what. It is too bad we have to rely so heavily on diagnoses to get services - it would be much better just to treat based on need and then see as the child grows and develops what the actual diagnosis might be once teh developmental pieces are ironed out and there is more stability in presentation. There is so much overlap - for example executive functioning deficits, sensory processing, emotional and behavioral dysregulation that are common to many childhood disorders.

They do get it right much of the time but having kids who grow out of ADHD, ASD, Childhood Bipolar etc... makes it sees as though the professionals are incompetent..which they aren't. It is just a very difficult and perhaps at times unnecessary task to sort out exaclty what means what.

Anonymous wrote:To me, this article just shows how difficult it really is to diagnose autism. We must accept that we are still in our infancy in understanding ASD and in our ability to diagnose it. Even Chuck Conlon, the well respected developmental ped in this area, has removed the ASD label from some kids that he has previously DXed. We must be committed to continued efforts to learn about autisms, their prognosis, and the impact of behavioral, biomedical and other therapies. I say be wary of those who claim to be experts and those who diagnose young children with 100% assuredness.

I agree.

A child I know well was diagnosed with ASD and went through years of treatments, some of them quite extreme. He did exhibit many traits commonly associated with ASD such as perseverating.

Now a teenager, he's recently been reevaluated and they are now saying that he doesn't have ASD but rather ADHD inattentive type and cognitive impairment.

I'm sure the diagnosticians did the best they could but I think it was also a case of which doctors were seen -- I think doctors tend to dx based on their specialties.

over diagnosed

And I think as kids get older the criteria get murky. Perhaps they outgrow lining up dinosaur toys or other visible indicators that together lead to a diagnosis, or perhaps their social and perspective-taking skills *improve* but I doubt they go away altogether.

A friend of mine, a school teacher, told me her vice principal informed her that if someone undergoes a severely traumatic experience it can *bring on* autism. I had to laugh!

To me, this article just shows how difficult it really is to diagnose autism. We must accept that we are still in our infancy in understanding ASD and in our ability to diagnose it. Even Chuck Conlon, the well respected developmental ped in this area, has removed the ASD label from some kids that he has previously DXed. We must be committed to continued efforts to learn about autisms, their prognosis, and the impact of behavioral, biomedical and other therapies. I say be wary of those who claim to be experts and those who diagnose young children with 100% assuredness.

I read it differently. I thought it was saying that the kids who had speech issues, learning issues, and anxiety were the ones who retained the ASD diagnosis. I view all three of those as common with ASD. Some of the ones who didn't have those issues lost the diagnosis. Anyway, I don't believe it. These could have been kids who were late talkers and early on were diagnosed with ASD, with criteria weighing too heavily on language...