Autism Soccer: DSM-5: A Manual of Mental Disorders

This is a book that explains each of the developmental disorders children and adults suffer, and the criteria of each.

Mental health is one of the most complex and still misunderstood fields of medicine. Illnesses that affect our psyche are relatively invisible, as most of the time they don’t have any physical symptoms and there’s still a general lack of knowledge surrounding them. What constitutes a mental disorder? Which is the right way to diagnose it? And what’s the correct treatment for it? Psychiatrists, psychologists, and other mental health professionals have been trying to answer these and many other questions for decades. The DSM-5 is an attempt to answer them.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is the main guide to diagnosis for mental health professionals. The American Psychiatric Association released it for the first time in 1952, and it’s been updated and revised several times ever since. The current version, DSM-5, was published in 2013. It contains detailed information regarding the criteria required for mental affections diagnosis and reviews of each disorder.

13 years passed until the manual was finally updated from its former version, DSM-4. Many things have changed over the course of the years, including our understanding of mental health and disorders. This manual is divided into three sections: one section explaining how it works and how it must be applied, the second section for diagnosis' criteria and codes, and the third section for emerging measures and models (concepts that need to be revised and investigated further).

Changes regarding autism

One of the most significant and controversial changes in the last manual are encapsulated in the definition of autism. Autistic disorder, pervasive developmental disorder, and Asperger’s syndrome were fused into a new term called autism spectrum disorder. The DSM-5 work group did this with the purpose of reducing diagnosis rates by 10%, making them more precise. In this sense, an individual is considered autistic only when the characteristic social communication deficits are accompanied by excessively repetitive behaviors, restricted interests, and insistence on sameness.

Although deficits in social communication are often diagnosed as a symptom of autism, other probable diagnoses must also be taken into consideration, such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, social anxiety disorder, and intellectual developmental disorder.

Even though nowadays many psychologists and psychiatrists are worried and remain skeptic about DSM-5's effectiveness in the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders, it’s a very detailed and complete guide to start understanding the world of mental health. It’s a step closer in the road to understand our autistic children and learn how to help them so they can be both happy and safe.

As parents and caretakers, we must stay as updated as we can with new definitions and changes on criteria. Children will always need someone to explain their condition to them, and we need to communicate with them as clearly as we can. Mental health providers will help on this journey, but we should always seize every valuable resource or piece of information.