Kevin comments on Do you have High-Functioning Asperger's Syndrome? - Less Wrong

19 [deleted] 10 May 2010 11:55PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (295)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: Kevin 11 May 2010 06:01:47AM *  3 points [-]

For what it's worth, DSM-V eliminated the distinction between Asperger's Syndrome and autism.

I scored 13 on the test. My most autistic trait is that I am not great at conversational eye contact, which the test didn't ask about. I also generally consider myself to be bad at phone conversations.

I'm actually on the ADHD spectrum -- I could make a post of the same format as this one for ADHD, which is probably just as prevalent here as among other forums heavy with programmer-type-people. For some reason I expect that ADHD thread would be controversial, but I guess that really depends on how I framed the questions.

Comment author: Jack 11 May 2010 06:09:58AM 1 point [-]

For some reason I expect that ADHD thread would be controversial, but I guess that really depends on how I framed the questions.

Can you name this reason?

Comment author: mattnewport 11 May 2010 06:20:03AM 0 points [-]

Perhaps some of these reasons, ranging from the basic controversy of whether it exists at all through a variety of controversies over treatment and diagnosis. Growing up in the UK I guess I'm influenced by the British opinion described there:

The British Psychological Society said in a 1997 report that physicians and psychiatrists should not follow the American example of applying medical labels to such a wide variety of attention-related disorders: "The idea that children who don’t attend or who don’t sit still in school have a mental disorder is not entertained by most British clinicians."

Although the article goes on to say that more recently they appear to have accepted that it may be a real condition.

Comment author: Kevin 11 May 2010 06:48:00AM *  2 points [-]

That's the reason. It's more debatable if ADHD even exists, and especially controversial given the high rate of medicating children diagnosed with ADHD.