| > I don't see how both can't be true. Laurent Mottron believes that the original narrow view of autism had some genuine scientific value, but DSM-5 ASD has broadened the concept to the point that it has become scientifically meaningless. He presents the idea of a “spectrum” as essentially taking a wrong turn, and he argues the only way to get autism research back on track is to move away from the idea of a “spectrum” and return to a focus on “prototypical” autism Lynn Waterhouse goes further - she believes that even the original narrower concept of “autism” is a failed scientific hypothesis, and the best way forward is to drop the concept of “autism” entirely (and related concepts such as ASD, Asperger’s and PDD-NOS), and look for alternative constructs to replace it with (her tentative proposal is “phenotypes of neurodevelopmental social impairment”) Allen Frances has said that (in hindsight) he made a big mistake by agreeing to put Asperger’s in the DSM-IV. He says it was sold to him as a very rare disorder and he was shocked to see how frequently it came to be diagnosed. And he’s said that DSM-5 ASD is “even worse” than DSM-IV Asperger’s. (Like Mottron, unlike Waterhouse, he has no objection to DSM-III/IV autistic disorder; Mottron is less negative on DSM-IV Asperger’s than Frances, but I suspect there is actually less distance between them in practice on that issue than a cursory reading of their public statements might suggest.) While they don’t agree with each other in all the details, what they all have in common, is a critical attitude towards contemporary mainstream diagnostic practices - maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but your response sounded to me like an attempt to harmonise those criticisms away > I'd generally say that having more awareness of how people deviate from neurotpicallity is a good thing. I think “neurotypicality” is a myth. Nobody is “neurotypical”. As the English child psychiatrist Sami Timimi says, “we are all, all humanity, neurodiverse”. |
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/rethinking-mental-he...
An interesting quote he ends with:
It pains me as a psychiatrist to say this, but as things stand I would recommend that you avoid seeing a psychiatrist. I know may great psychiatrists, but without personal recommendation, given the nature of current dominant models, you are putting your loved one in danger of being prescribed medications that may lead to some short term gain at the expense of long term enslavement to a 'chronic' disease model, addiction to difficult to come off meds and lack of empowerment to take control of finding a path for their own recovery.