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There is a huge gulf between Asperger's and full blown autism.

People with Aspergers are "normal" people in the sense that they are generally capable of looking after themselves, communicating and working normal jobs etc

People will full Autism have severely limited communication skills (often no spoken or written language skills at all beyond repeating a handful of phrases) and require a significant amount of assistance in most areas of life. They will often live with full time carers.



There are still people that fall under the high-functioning category that have a hard time taking care of themselves and holding down jobs. Just because you check some boxes doesn't mean you check them all, and I'm glad the DSM is removing a term that tries to generalize a subset.


I agree, but the level of care required for an "aspie" vs that for somebody with severe autism is night and day.


I thought Asperger's was being removed from the new DSM, so it's all autism now?


Not sure of the new terminology but these are 2 conditions that vary not just quantitatively but qualitatively.

The term Autism as it is used today suggests severely delayed language development. This is not a symptom of Asperger's and sufferers of the latter can often develop advanced language skills.




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