American Psychiatric Association has announced that diagnostic manual of Autism will alter its criteria rigorously at the end of this year and hot debate over the issues is attracting people's attention. Fred R. Volkmar, M.D. of Yale Child Study Center, has diagnosed 372 adults and children, who were diagnosed with slight autism in 1993, by applying the new diagnostic manual and discovered only 45% of the people had autism. As Volkmar felt the necessity to adopt novel diagnostic criteria, he integrated autism and similar but distinct symptoms such as Asperger syndrome or PDD-NOS into one category called "Autsim Spectrum Disorder". He also suggested revising the former way to diagnose with autism if six out of twelve criteria were satisfied.
However, many psychiatrists are opposed to Volkmar's suggestion, as the research materials are too old and objects of study were limited to people with slight autism. Besides, if new manual is to be applied, original patients could be exempted from government's financial support so tens of thousands of patients will encounter difficulties.
But I support the revision of the diagnostic manual. During class we saw children with autism developing language ability and social skills by application of operant conditioning. Children were divided into two groups. Among the children there were couple of children, who were improved well enough to attend schools with ordinary students and they were included in experimental group which received intensive treatment. None of the children in the control group was dramatically improved to normal state. The ultimate purpose to identify diagnostic manual of mental disorder is not to label those people abnormal or extraordinary but to treat detrimental effect. Equivocal criteria that apply to too many cases don't lead to proper treatment. In my opinion, patients who satisfy the strict manual are needed to be attentively treated.
Hot Debate over Autism Diagnosis
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I think that this an interesting point about psychology and other medical diagnoses. I find it interesting that people put such stock in these manuals about what symptoms make up a certain disorder because in reality we all know that the diagnosis depends on what the doctor thinks and what varies from each individual. However, you do make a good point that these manuals, while perhaps not very useful in the diagnosis stage, are what the government relies on for their policies about financial support and other things. So, I guess in the end perhaps the revision isn't what we should be worried about and maybe we should change how the government creates their policies when it comes to the medical world.
This post is interesting to me on a personal level. Both of my younger siblings are autistic. I think using the old or new model isn't as important as just educating the public of the early signs of autism. Knowing the signs and knowing the developmental delays in your children will be much more important to providing care and treatment. Whether these children are misdiagnosed or diagnosed on the spectrum it shows something is not right and action needs to be taken. While putting labels on children will not help them ignoring the signs will. I believe getting many different doctors opinion on your child will help help lower children being misdiagnosed.