Dear DSM5 Team: Some Spontaneous Suggestions For You
Regarding DSM5 changes please read this action alert from NAA New York Metro. Seems our kids can just spontaneously "get better." So relax you uptight Moms and Dads. Isn't that nifty? Let's talk about spontaneous.
This is a spontaneous kiss.
This is spontaneous combustion.
This is a spontaneous (and slightly annoying) song.
This is "spontaneous" autism recovery. From a severely affected child to a boy who can perform. It took years of hard work, therapy, biomedical interventions.
Asking parents to trust your decisions, after decades of no answers, no ability to count or even confirm an epidemic, no cause, no treatments outside of drugs that cause weight gain to the point of obesity and side effects we would not impinge upon our pets would require one of these:
Regarding your changes to autism in the DSM? For the sake of our loved ones who need services and for whom services are tied to diagnosis - like EVERY disease/diagnosis in the country based on our miserable insurance providers and even our school systems. You can't touch this.
Hey, easy on the cynicism about the Hallelujah Chorus Food Court Flash Mob. It's one of my most favorite videos of all time (buckets of tears every time I watch it, for the spontaneous joy and inspriation it inspires... and I'm not even Christian! God knows we need buckets of spontaneous joy and inspiration now and then.)
But I respect its use in your razor-sharp lampoon of "spontaneous recovery." F--k the APA.
Posted by: Amy Becker | January 24, 2012 at 09:07 PM
So, definition change is the supposed reason why so many more autistic children have been discovered,.... and now they're changing it again to make them all go away???? What the heck kind of logic is that?
If they were really concerned about whether the increase is real, they would go back to the definition that was used in the 80's. If they applied it to children with a diagnosis today, and they see an incidence greater than 1 in 10000, then the increase is obviously real.
But we all know they'll never do that, for the same reason that they refuse to do a study comparing vaccinated children to completely unvaccinated children.
Posted by: Barry | January 24, 2012 at 06:27 PM
After seeing an article a reader here linked to on PANDAS and PANS, they should just forget about updating the DSM4 or 5 or whatever. I mean updating crap and breaking it down onto more crap results in yes, just more and more crap. They need to spend time on the study of the brain and inflammation, immune responses more before they go "updating."
Posted by: Jen | January 24, 2012 at 03:35 PM
Thank you for these videos, they were all fun to watch.
I get the message and cleverly done!!!!
Lots of things may seem spontanous to an obsever watching the end result, but everything takes planning and lots of WORK!
No way any of this stuff did not take planning and thought!
Every last one of us learned this in the seventh grade science about spontaneous generation - an obsolete principle regarding the origin of life from inanimate matter. Scientist after scientist disproved this theory.
There is nothing spontaneous that comes out well or right!
And so when we have peds, medical people, doctors claiming leave the kids alone they will spontaneous get better --
I can assure you - they were not with me when
* I was putting oat bran in every thing we ate,
* we ate almost from nothing else but our garden.
* Not at the table as we ate salmon patties
*Not with me when I dragged him to the speech thearpist
*Not with my mother as she played games with him she had learned as a second grade teacher.
*Not with us when we made him meet our eyes and give us his attention.
*Not with us as I gave asprin in the darken room when he was sick again and again.
*Not there at the end of the first grade and he was not reading, and every night I pulled his finger across the printed words as I read to him.
*Not with me, as I noticed absentee seizures.
*Not with his teachers as they too noticed absenttee seizures.
*Not with the teachers, or the school psychologist that said he had PDD-NOS, tourettes.
Not with me, not with us, ---- and worse did not want to listen either.
Posted by: Benedetta | January 24, 2012 at 12:33 PM
Well said. I'm reposting it. Autism is a spectrum and my son is that of a child forever, although he is 17. He is not a "miracle" cured like all the stories, although we have tried many, many things. He will always need someone to help him in everyway, from toileting and bathing to communicating. He is innocent and I'm thankful for that, but that comes with a huge burden on our family. Thanks, from a mom with a child with autism, epilepsy, "cognitive delay", ulcers, gut issues, major speech and communication problems, behaviorial and mood issues, food intolerences, allergies, etc...
Posted by: Jenny Duffy | January 24, 2012 at 11:12 AM
Autism, Autism go away, please come back another way. This is how some doctors want to cure autism, no longer the need for better diagnosis.
Posted by: victor pavlovic | January 24, 2012 at 09:00 AM