Asperger’s Syndrome May be Eliminated from DSM-V.

On the front page of its Science Times section, the New York Times(11/3, D1, Wallis http://tinyurl.com/eliminating-aspergers) reports that “experts who are revising” the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders “have proposed to eliminate” Asperger’s syndrome “from the new edition, due out in 2012,” folding “Asperger’s syndrome and another mild form of autism, pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified…into a single broad diagnosis, autism spectrum disorder.” These “proposed changes” are “part of a bigger overhaul that will” see “psychiatric disorders…as a continuum, with many degrees of severity,” with the goal of developing “severity measures within each diagnosis,” according to Darrel A. Regier, MD, “research director at the American Psychiatric Association and vice chairman of the diagnostic manual’s task force.”

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