the fifth (and current) edition of the manual, dsm-5, made things worse by collapsing classic autism and asperger’s into a “spectrum” that makes it even easier to misdiagnose, frances said.
the unintended consequences, he said, have been “disastrous.”
“panicked parents falsely assumed the rapid increase in rates was due to vaccination — not realizing it was instead a consequence of looser definitions and assessments. this has led to measles epidemics all over the world.”
over-diagnosis is also harmful for parents and children, he said — “stigmatizing them, causing needless worry and reducing expectations.”
mottron (who believes adding asperger’s to the dsm was, in itself, a good decision) said that health professionals should clearly distinguish autistic traits from autism. only about 35 per cent of those referred to him for an assessment of autism actually have the disorder.
his team didn’t assess every area where people with autism are known to differ from people without. still, “the cliché that you will see everywhere is, ‘oh, you have more autism because they are better recognized,’ which is absolutely wrong,” he said.
“it’s not that they are better recognized,” he said. it’s that people with less profound deviations from “normal” are being diagnosed with autism.