NPR’s Asperger’s FAIL « The Biology Files

Excerpt from NPR’s Asperger’s FAIL « The Biology Files.

NPR’s “All Things Considered” ran a piece today on the difficulties in defining “mental disorders.” Based on what is posted on their site regarding the piece, they essentially report the opinion of one man, Allen Frances, who has taken it upon himself to do two selfish things. The first is that he blames himself for what he calls the “Asperger’s epidemic.” The second is that he felt compelled to discuss some unfounded–or at least, unsupported–assumptions about Asperger’s diagnoses on NPR.

Frances, former chief of psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center, was the editor of the previous edition of the “mental disorders” bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. We’re coming up on the fifth version of this hefty tome. From my personal experience, by the time it comes out, research will be about five years ahead of much of what it contains. But never mind that. Frances’ issue with IV was that it contained Asperger’s as a diagnostic category (he has other issues not addressed in the NPR piece). He describes having acquiesced in its inclusion based on needs expressed by professionals who were seeing children with autism-like behaviors that weren’t as severe as the disorder known as autism.