Tag Archives: Subtyping

Report on subtyping autism workshop

Autism, Subtyping,

On the 19th of November 2019 a workshop on subtyping autism was held at LSBU. The hosting organisation was PARC (Participatory Autism Research Collective). With help from individuals from PARC and LSBU, myself, Chloe Farahar and Annette Foster organised this workshop. The workshop lasted two and a half hours. There were five talks, each lasting twenty minutes followed by ten minutes of questions. Some papers argued against subtyping, some argued for subtyping and some looked at specific subtypes (or, in my own case, looked at multiple specific subtypes when I outlined the history of subtyping). I was pleased to see that the workshop was well attended, counting 37 people present at one point on a quick head count.

One aim of the workshop was to obtain the views of autistic people on the question of subtyping. I feel this was a success since some of the speakers identified as autistic whilst there were also autistic individuals in the audience. Some autistic people thought that questions about how to best formulate the diagnosis of autism should be largely determined by autistic people whereas other autistic people felt the views of autistic people should be one of many relevant factors. Either way, I hope this workshop went some way to facilitated autistic people, as well as the non-autistic, in providing views upon this issue.

Quite a number of speakers seemed to share a common vision of what a good psychiatric diagnosis should do, even though they disagreed about whether subtypes would help achieve those goals. In my presentation and in other presentations it was argued that there is more to autistic people than just a broadly defined autism. Rather, it is important to understand the specific ways in which a specific autistic person manifests autism (alongside understanding aspects of them unrelated to their diagnosis). Also, I and others argued that understanding how autistic people can change over time is important. It is also important to understand that different environments can influence how autistic people think, feel and behave. So in this reguard there was a level of shared commonality when it came to questions over what a good diagnostic system should do. Some people (including myself) felt that subtypes would help with understanding these factors whereas other felt this information could be best understood without subtyping autism.

I outlined a history of subtyping. I divided my history into three different areas, the 1930s to the 1970s, the 1980s until recently (around 2010) and finally I discussed the present day. I focused upon Lauretta Bender and Leo Kanner in the first period, then I focused upon DSM-III and Lorna Wing in the second period and finally I focused upon DSM-5 in the final period. I outlined how the subtypes which were employed heavily reflected the values held by psychiatrists in each era. I suggested that DSM-5 is still largely working within the values present in the 1980s even though our values are currently in a process of shifting away from those 1980s values. I then suggested that adopting subtypes would help better reflect the values we are currently moving towards.

The full list of talks was as follows:

Autistic observable and unobservable experiences, and erroneous subtyping: Introducing the Internal and External Autistic Space (Chloe Farahar  & Annette Foster )

Exploring an autistic derived classification of autism (Mary Doherty)

Online discourse on autism does not need autism subtyping (Dafne Zuleima Morgado Ramirez)

An historical overview of subtyping (Sam Fellowes)

Demand Avoidance Phenomena: The circularity, integrity and validity of PDA: a commentary on the PDA Conference held by the National Autistic Society (2018) (Richard Woods)

Subtyping autism workshop

Autism, Classification, Subtyping, ,

On the 19th of November (16.30 to 19.00 at London South Bank University (LSBU)) I am hosting (with collaborators) a workshop on subtyping autism. Below are some reasons why I am interested in this topic and more details on the event (note that these are reasons why I, rather than my collaborators or the presenters, am interested in the topic of subtyping).

My main academic interest is showing that psychiatric diagnoses are in principle scientifically legitimate. I argue that some (though not all) psychiatric diagnoses can be used in a similar way to how models are used in more respectable sciences. They cannot do everything a typical model can do in other sciences. Also, what they can do is usually done with less precision than occurs in other sciences. However, what level of similarity that they do have means that they have significant scientific worth (and this is true even though they typically cover a heterogeneous symptom picture and are causally heterogeneous).

Of course, psychiatric diagnoses can vary significantly in their scientific worth. Various ways of formulating them can impact this. The main diagnosis I am interested in is autism and one alternative way of formulating it is to add subtypes. This could alter its scientific worth as well as having many practical impacts outside of the scientific domain. This workshop will hopefully generate interesting discussion about these issues. Also, many speakers and attendees have a diagnosis of autism (or are in the process of being assessed) so lived experience might contribute some insight to both scientific and practical consequences of subtyping. Below is the initial abstract that was part of the call for papers and then the list of speakers.

This was the initial call for papers: Prior to and after the publication of the 2013 DSM there was much controversy over whether Asperger’s syndrome should be removed from the diagnostic manual. Members of the neurodiversity movement made contributions to this debate, drawing upon their lived experience of being autistic and their knowledge of the ways in which being diagnosed can be (or is not) beneficial. This conference aims to consider the question of autism and subtypes more broadly. What benefits or disadvantages are there for autistic people in adding substantive subtypes to autism? It is commonly stated that autistic people can present in many different ways. Might subtypes help add accuracy and nuance to clinical pictures? On the other hand, the boundaries between subtypes are typically vague and they can be placed in multiple places. This raises the danger that they are arbitrary impositions which do not reflect autistic experience. This conference draws upon the experience of autistic people to help resolve these issues. Possible areas for discussion include whether self-understanding for those diagnosed would be increased through being diagnosed with a more specific subtype or if this would unhelpfully impose unnatural constraints? Would the non-autistic be better able to understand different ways autism can manifest if there are significant subtypes, or would it help perpetuate unhelpful stereotypes based on an imposed limited number of ways autism would be proposed to manifest? Would the neurodiversity movement benefit from the subtypes bringing greater focus upon different ways autism can manifest or would this lead to unhelpful fracturing of the autistic community?

These are the papers that are being presented:

Autistic observable and unobservable experiences, and erroneous subtyping: Introducing the Internal and External Autistic Space (Chloe Farahar  & Annette Foster )

Exploring an autistic derived classification of autism (Mary Doherty)

Online discourse on autism does not need autism subtyping (Dafne Zuleima Morgado Ramirez)

An historical overview of subtyping (Sam Fellowes)

Demand Avoidance Phenomena: The circularity, integrity and validity of PDA: a commentary on the PDA Conference held by the National Autistic Society (2018) (Richard Woods)