Aired on Panacea on 2SER
Has anyone ever told you they’ve got a little bit of Asperger’s?
Maybe they’re socially awkward. Maybe they get absorbed in the one activity for hours. Maybe they just seem a little bit “different”.
But while some people use the term casually to explain a quirk in their personality, a recent change in the way it’s diagnosed has shone a spotlight on the way we think about this neurological disorder.
There’s so much change happening in the field of autism that the latest version of the Australian Autism Handbook, which came out this week, is the second edition in only five years.
One of the biggest updates is the new classification of Asperger’s Syndrome.
It’s a decision some people consider controversial.
I spoke to the co-author of the Australian Autism Handbook, Benison O’Reilly, about it this afternoon – and what better day to do it than today: it’s World Autism Awareness Day.
IN: “It’s actually an area of great change…”
OUT: “It can have serious ramifications for people affected by it.”
DUR: 5.29
That was Benison O’Reilly, the co-author of the second edition of the Australian Autism Handbook, breaking down the way we think about Asperger’s.
TRANSCRIPT:
BENISON O’REILLY: It’s actually an area of great change. There’s a lot of money that’s gone into research, particularly in the US, so there was quite a lot of change, but I guess one of the main areas was the new diagnostic criteria, the DSM-5 which has created a lot of controversy. So the DSM-5 is the main diagnostic manual used for a lot of health conditions, anything that’s sort of diagnosed by observation – things like depression, anxiety, schizophrenia. But autism was a major rewrite from the DSM-4 which came out in 1994 and this new version is removing Asperger’s as a stand-alone diagnosis and including it just under Autism Spectrum Disorder. So that obviously covered quite a deal in the book, because there’s a lot of uncertainty around that. It’s quite a big rewrite for a book that came out 5 years ago, but it was necessary I think, because a lot’s changed in that time.
ELIZA GOETZE: What does the new diagnostic criteria mean for people who identify with having Asperger’s?
BENISON O’REILLY: Well, it is an issue. Obviously these things – you can’t retrospectively undiagnosed someone who had the previous diagnosis, I’ll put it that way. Because the situation in Australia is that there’s not enough people available to diagnose the children that are coming through. The main issue, I think, is a lot of people felt [it was] a more comfortable term [in] society. It gave them an identity – you know, someone with Asperger’s, people could relate to it. And so there is some people with Asperger’s who are a bit uncomfortable being lumped in the autism spectrum, so it’s more around those issues, but really, when you look at the research, it makes sense, because really Asperger’s is a version of high-functioning autism. And when they looked at the research, that became clear, that there was a very hazy line between the two conditions. It’s high-functioning autism that has the symptoms of autism but without the language delay that comes along with a more classical case of autism, and also, by definition people with Asperger’s tend to have normal intelligence. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re all geniuses, but they have normal intelligence, you know, so they can be gifted in some areas. But it’s clearly on the autism spectrum and the research showed that, so there is a good science basis behind the new diagnosis.
I think probably a bigger issue is that the new diagnosis has tightened up a bit as well. They think there might have been a bit of over-diagnosis, but that’s a difficult area because if the diagnosis is tightened up and children who are on the margins don’t get a diagnosis, and therefore they won’t get government funding, so that’s an issue as well. So it’s a difficult line to tread. There are some parents who are worried that they won’t get enough funding, but there is a reasonable amount of funding around, especially when children are younger, from the federal government.
So yeah, it’s a bit of an unknown, and a lot of parents are worried about it, but I guess the proof of the pudding’s in the eating – we won’t know for a few years until quite a few children come through with the new diagnostic criteria.
ELIZA GOETZE: Asperger’s seems to have taken on a kind of pop culture identity of its own – some people throw around the term quite casually and say that they’ve got a bit of it when obviously it’s not formally diagnosed. How has that affected a lot of people who have been diagnosed with it?
BENISON O’REILLY: Yeah, well it’s interesting – there was a bit of media around that on the weekend and it’s unfortunate. I mean, obviously, everyone looks at – I mean, I look at it as well, my husband looks, you look at your own sort of what you’d call an autistic trait – you might have something that makes you [feel like that]…But Autism Disorder, and Asperger’s Disorder – “disorder”, by definition, is something that is negatively affecting your life. So if you have a few autistic traits, you’re a bit antisocial, you get obsessive about something, you’re very good at concentrating on one thing at the expense of others, but it’s not affecting you – you still have friends, it’s not affecting your work and things like that, you really don’t have Asperger’s, or an autism spectrum disorder, in that definition.
So I guess there is a concern that that sort of attitude trivialises what is a real condition, and that can be an issue because if someone genuinely has Asperger’s and their condition’s not taken seriously, it can have huge ramifications. Unfortunately with Asperger’s often comes depression and anxiety, because they realise they’re different but don’t have the skills to counteract the difference – they’re wired differently, basically. It’s really down to neurological wiring, so they don’t learn, it’s actually a real challenge for them, and a lot of people with Asperger’s who do function well in society basically go around concentrating the whole time. They have to learn in a methodical way something that comes instinctively to the rest of us. So I do get slightly concerned about people just using the term casually when it is a real disorder and it can have real ramifications for people affected by it.
Image from Parenthood via NJ.com
Eliza Goetze 