A NUANCED APPROACH TO AUTISM
By: Peter Feely The disorder can affect children in profoundly different ways In 2013, the pre-eminent psychiatry handbook, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder, redefined how healthcare professionals should approach autism. The different autism-related disorders, such as Asperger’s syndrome — where children suffer from social interaction deficit but no language impairment — were dismissed in favour of the term autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Children are now diagnosed as either mild, moderate or severe. Critics of the new definition were concerned it would mean that children suffering from certain mild autism-related disorders would fail to meet the diagnosis criteria...