Here it is for those who have no idea how to enable dead comments:
"gpaumier 5 hours ago [dead]
(I'm the author.) You're right that there isn't (yet) a medical test like a blood test or an MRI to detect autism. In France, the official "diagnosis" is established by a psychiatrist based on interviews and questionnaires with the person, and some of their family members if possible. That's how it happened for me, and at the end of the evaluation process, they said I met "the criteria (CIM 10 and DSM IV) for a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder, and in particular for Asperger syndrome (CIM 10: Axis I, F84.5)". I haven't looked into what those numbers refer to exactly, and I don't like all the medical connotations, but that's how it's done in France. There's a screenshot of the report in an post I published earlier this year (in the "self-discovery" section: https://guillaumepaumier.com/2015/02/22/2014-in-review/ )."
It is a relatively objective process - it does screen out 99% of people, and clinicians usually (80%-ish of the time IIRC) get the same yes-or-no answer for the same person.
There's no medical test because (like most of the DSM) autism is a description, rather than an underlying cause. That is, if you diagnose flu using a set of symptoms, you're using the symptoms to predict that the virus exists. If you diagnose autism using the checklist in the DSM, you're simply saying that you saw the stuff on the list - there's nothing said about cause. See also here: http://intellectualizing.net/2015/03/31/not-explaining-autis...
This is a fundamental difference between DSM diagnosis (which is putting people in descriptive categories, without explaining "why") and medical diagnosis of many conditions with a known cause (which means identifying an explanation such as a virus).
Your response to this guy is [dead] so you might be shadow-banned, or some funny business about your account being too new. Nobody can read your comments unless they have enabled their account to read [dead] comments.
Nice article and welcome to HN!
That's how it happened for me, and at the end of the evaluation process, they said I met "the criteria (CIM 10 and DSM IV) for a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder, and in particular for Asperger syndrome (CIM 10: Axis I, F84.5)". I haven't looked into what those numbers refer to exactly, and I don't like all the medical connotations, but that's how it's done in France.
There's a screenshot of the report in an post I published earlier this year (in the "self-discovery" section: https://guillaumepaumier.com/2015/02/22/2014-in-review/ ).