FOX News has published a report, Some Experts Worried Over Revised Autism Guidelines, in which two autism experts, Dr. Keith Ablow, a psychiatrist and Fox News contributor, and Dr. Thomas Frazier, who treats children with autism at the Cleveland Clinic Children’s Hospital, express their concerns about the possible impact of the DSM-5`s new Autism Spectrum Disorder category on high functioning autistic children. They are concerned that some high functioning autistic children might lose their diagnoses, and access to autism specific education services, although the FOX report does not provide much detail on the basis for their concerns:
“These new guidelines would place an emphasis on preservative and repetitive behaviors – but many children who were originally diagnosed with autism may be reclassified. Ablow said this can leave some people who are still suffering with some of the symptoms or less severe symptoms out in the cold. “If we don’t loosen it a little bit, I suspect that some of these high-functioning kids may actually either get shifted into a different diagnosis,” said Dr. Thomas Frazier.”
There is no mention however of the possible negative impact on low functioning autistic children, those with intellectual disabilities who might be excluded by the DSM5 Autism Spectrum Disorder mandatory criterion A which excludes an autism diagnosis where a person is also intellectually disabled:
A. Persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction across contexts, not accounted for by general developmental delays, and manifest by all 3 of the following:.....`
Like so many autism experts and professionals the FOX experts are concerned about high functioning autistic persons but not about low functioning autistic persons who remain the invisible autistics abandoned by health care professionals and the mainstream media alike.
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