Lecture psychiatric disorders 12: neurodiversity for ASD & ADHD Flashcards
How do psychiatrists diagnose people?
With only clinical interviews based on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder (DSM-5).
What is the downside to diagnosing somebody based on the DSM-5?
That the diseases in DSM-5 are categorical or dimensional, which means you either don’t have the disease or you do.
Is categorizing diseases always bad?
No, because in regard to disease like tuberculosis → you either have it or you don’t.
But this is just not the case for mental disorders, they might be better conceptualized as dimensional or spectrum traits.
Name the only mental disorder that is conceptualized in DSM-5 as a spectrum.
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD)
Autism has a high heritability, hence why people termed autism as a disorder. Why is this not true and unfair to term autism as a disorder?
Because e.g. IQ also has a high heritability. So it’s very unfair to term autism as a disorder, while e.g. IQ isn’t.
Since a lot of people didn’t agree with autism termed as a disorder, the neurodiversity approach was developed. What does this neurodiversity approach mean?
That there’s diversity among human brains regarding sociability, learning, attention, impulsivity, mood and other important mental function. There’s no ‘good or bad’, there’s just a lot of diversity.
What’s the difference between neurodivergent and neurotypical?
- Neurodivergent is the term for when someone’s brain processes learns, and/or behaves differently from what is considered ‘typical’.
- Neurotypical is used to describe people with typical neurological development or functioning.
What are advantages of people with ADHD?
Spontaneous, creative, divergent mind, vital, high-energy, fast-thinking etc.
What are advantages of people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (level 1)?
Strong persistent interests, attention to detail, unusual memory, fascination with systems and patterns and ability to concentrate for long periods.
There’s a growing body of research where it’s seen that high functioning autistic people outperform neurologically typical children and adults in a wide range of perception tasks. Name these tasks that autistic people excel at.
(don’t learn by heart)
- Spotting a pattern in a distracting environment
- Auditory taks (such as discriminating sound pitches)
- Detecting visual structures and mentally manipulating complex three-dimensional shapes
- Raven’s Matrices (a classical intelligence test in which subjects use analytical skills to complete an ongoing visual pattern)
- Simultaneously process large pieces of perceptual information, such as large data sets
Niche construction of ADHD is already explained in the flashcard deck about the lecture of ADHD.
What is the niche construction for autism?
- A job that is solitary, science, IT, working with large data sets or a job that demands high concentration.
- Use (cognitive) behavioral therapy to learn and understand social relationships
- Connect with like minded people via internet for support and understanding
What is the pitfall of neurodiversity?
Romanticizing psychological or psychiatric conditions
