[ender341341]

> It's not as if a separate diagnosis would change how a speech therapist interacts with a child.

This is the really big part that a lot of people seem to miss when complaining about the changes in DSMV.

Previously there were dozens of conditions that had nearly the exact same symptoms and super similar treatments that may work.

The change basically said, for these given symptoms here's a bunch of treatments that may work.

I've known a few people that were diagnosed as something that would now be under autism, but because they had that diagnosis that didn't happen to include some of the treatments that actually ended up working for them they ended up not finding them until they happened to get a doctor that said "you know these diagnoses are really close, lets try this instead".

From talking with doctors I don't think I've heard anyone disagree that autism is almost assuredly a cover term for many different things similar to cancer not being a singular disease. The difference right now is that we don't have any concrete test to differentiate between any of the autisms yet, just various sets of treatments that work to varying degrees for different people.