The Difficulty of Diagnosis Featuring Jason Ross
November 3, 2008 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
Today’s ABC News reports on the difficulty of getting a diagnosis of autism. 29-year-old Jason Ross was 25 when he was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome; his mother, Lois Ross, describes how he was first said to have speech delay, attention deficit disorder, “psychosis not otherwise specified,” obsessive compulsive disorder and schizophrenia. You can also read Ross’s own words on his blog, Drive Mom Crazy.
Aspergers with a speech delay….. interesting….
jypsy,
It’s my understanding that you can get a diagnosis of Asperger’s even with a speech delay. Here’s a quote from the DSM-IV
“In contrast to Autistic Disorder, there are no clinically significant delays or deviances in language acquisition (e.g., single non-echoed words are used communicatively by age 2 years, and spontaneous communicative phrases are used by age 3 years)…although more subtle aspects of social communication (e.g., typical give and take in conversation) may be affected.”
Normal language acquisition usually includes the use of single words by about 12 months, and communicative phrases by 24 months. So a child could have about a year’s language delay and still not have a “clinically significant” language delay.
According to the article, “The diagnoses began with speech delay”. I was assuming that such a Dx was based on a “clinically significant” delay.
What kind of diagnosis someone receives often seems rather random to me. Or it depends a lot on the system of services of the country.
Or the diagnosing psych thinks one ’sounds nicer’ than the other.
Another big smile from me. Yay Jason!
(from another person who had multiple other diags/labels before now… some still apply! and Yes I do see your site, but only commented once over there, so far)