[Asperger's Syndrome Topic]

So what does everyone think about the upcoming DSM-V officially doing away with Asperger's as a diagnosis and classifying its symptoms under High-Functioning Autism?

I've met autistics. We're not as related as people say. This merger is just a bunch of NTs saying "Hmm, they both aren't social. Let's clump them together!"

Go ahead and call the American Psychological Association "a bunch of NTs"* if you like, but an organizing body and forum for the great majority of the psychiatric practitioners in the US, as well as many others from other countries, tends to know what it's doing. If anyone knows what they're doing, it'd have to be them. And the DSM-V committee wouldn't make a move like this unless the majority of the world's psychologists would agree and abide (and psychological academia thrives on inner conflict anyway). Asperger's is autism without the speech difficulties. That's literally it. Even right now, the DSM-IV symptoms for Asperger's are literally just the Autistic Disorder symptoms with the speech part removed. Classifying it as its own disorder, with its own name, has caused a lot of misconceptions about what exactly it IS. Basically anyone can have "mild Asperger's," since so few people know what the criteria really ARE. I'm totally in favor of the change, largely because it means the general public will take the disorder more seriously. It's lost a lot of meaning, socially, being used as a general term for "awkward person." * Psychologists are, more often than not, in treatment themselves for one or more disorder. Almost all clinical practitioners are required to go to regular therapy sessions. Psychology is one of the least NT professions out there.

[Asperger's Syndrome Topic]

So what does everyone think about the upcoming DSM-V officially doing away with Asperger's as a diagnosis and classifying its symptoms under High-Functioning Autism?

[Official My Little Pony topic]

Link From the official MLP [removed]. She looked a lot better in her first appearance, I thought. The new mane makes her look like a mini-Celestia.