Now this is fascinating: Why the diagnosis of Asperger Syndrome will disappear. This is as it should be and more accurately represents Asperger's as part of a continuum rather than a pigeonhole. I suspect that some aspies are going to be disenchanted with being in the same broad category as LFA and HFA people. To those people, I say get over yourself and do some serious introspection on self loathing of autistic traits and such. Hating on other auties isn't OK. What, are you going to divorce yourself from the entire human race while you're at it??

While I have and value a relatively high IQ, I don't for a minute think that I am a better person than the so called LFA who sits and rocks in the corner. How can we say that a person who is non verbal is retarded simply because they don't speak? That's a stupid assumption. How can we assume that someone who is preoccupied with coping with sensory overload and god only knows what sort of anxiety is retarded? People like this may be disinterested, unable to get past the panic/overload, thinking about much more interesting to them stuff, etc. I honestly believe that many autistics are inaccurately labeled as being of low intelligence simply because it is difficult to test them accurately. However....I also think that there is more, so much more, to life and personhood than raw intelligence, and that we do ourselves and all of life a disservice when we value people based on IQ.

Back to the subject at hand, I am especially intrigued by and interested in the new "Anxiety, Obsessive-Compulsive-Related, and Trauma-Related Disorders." See this link for more. I will be very relieved if they can somehow manage to partition war induced PTSD from other trauma types. There is a difference between the two and at present, finding books or info that will be helpful for me is difficult, because all the PTSD books I've found so far have been geared towards war veterans and their wives...which is worthy, but un-useful for me. I will be following these changes with interest...