Top Psychiatrist Says Autism Should be Diagnosed With a Pencil
Republished with permission from AbleChild.
While Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., brings in the best and brightest to conclude, once and for all, what caused the epic increase in Autism cases in the US, the answer may have just become very easy to discern due to the “guilt” admitted by one of the nation’s leading psychiatrists.
Those who long have been aware of the fraud associated with psychiatric diagnosing are not surprised to learn that the psychiatric community is behind the horrific number of Autism cases in the United States. The only thing that is surprising is how long it has taken for the fraud to be exposed.
Dr. Allen Francis, former chair of the Task Force responsible for overhauling and updating the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-III), reflecting a greatly expanded diagnosis for Autism in the DSM-IV. Francis referred to the increase in Autism cases as an “epidemic” of overdiagnosis. One might argue that, based on his own words, it is an “epidemic of misdiagnosis.”
In the 1980’s the rate of Autism in the US was one in 2,000. With the help of Dr. Francis and his DSM-IV team, the rate had skyrocketed to 1 in 150 by 2000 and, unbelievably, today has settled at one in 31. Considering the extraordinary expansion of symptoms made by Francis and his team, one now refers to an Autism diagnosis as being on the “Spectrum.”
Yes. During an interview with the BBC, Francis explained that “it’s a kind of mea culpa – we had good intentions that led to terrible unintended consequences.” In fact, what is more interesting about Francis’s “mea culpa” is that the grand psychiatrist seems more concerned that his expansion of the Autism diagnosis has contributed to the anti-vax movement, not that millions of kids have been wrongly diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder where there is none.
Francis explained during his BBC interview that he and his team worked to loosen the definition of Autism because psychiatrists and pediatricians thought the criteria was too stringent, leaving some with lesser symptoms unable to get health services. According to Francis, he and his team “introduced something called Asperger’s disorder, and that evolved into autism spectrum disorder…”
Here’s the kicker, according to Francis “this meant that the symptoms of autism as currently used or defined by many clinicians, and certainly self-defined by patients and families, would include many people who have normal social awkwardness, eccentricities, difficulties relating to people that previously would never have been considered a mental disorder.”
See how psychiatric diagnosing works? The man responsible for Autism “Spectrum” disorders now says that many people probably were diagnosed as disordered but were actually normal. And Francis further explains that “because of loosened definition, because of the fact that school services are tied to having the diagnosis of autism, and perhaps most of all because of the internet popularity of self-diagnosis, we have this enormous increase in rate.” And, thanks to the expanded definition of autism, the hundreds of billions of dollars that now flow into the behavioral health industry is bankrupting state funds. It’s become a cottage industry for mental health practitioners.
So, who knows how many millions of children in the US, and the world for that matter, have been diagnosed with Francis’s questionable autism diagnosis? In fact, Francis makes it clear that psychiatric diagnosing is not based in science when he says, “there is no biological test, symptoms vary greatly in nature and severity, clinicians don’t always agree, different diagnostic tests may come up with different conclusions and the diagnosis is not always stable over time.” “Not stable over time?” How much time? A day, a week, a year or twenty years?
Then, the ultimate psychiatric fraud crescendo, Francis explains “diagnoses in kids, particularly, should be written in pencil because they are so often unreliable and unstable.” Francis continues, “there’s a tendency that once a diagnosis is made it gets medical charts and it’s sort of written in stone…it lasts forever and it can haunt someone for the rest of their life who had a misdiagnosis of autism early in their life, and who changed self-expectations and external expectations as a result.”
“Written in pencil?” How many parents were warned that the autism diagnosis could greatly change because children would change…would grow up? Based on the psychiatrist’s remarks, it makes perfect sense that Francis feels the need to beg for forgiveness with his cheap “mea culpa” and admission of guilt.
How many children were wrongly diagnosed because of Francis’s team’s expansion of the Autism diagnosis? Worse, how many children have been prescribed dangerous mind-altering drugs as “treatment” from a very young age because they received Francis’s erasable diagnosis. How many of those diagnosis’s should have been “written in pencil?”
Thanks to Francis and his DSM-IV team, an expansion of symptoms that now constitute Autism was created, including the following:
Asperger’s syndrome. This is on the milder end of the autism spectrum. A person with Asperger’s may be very intelligent and able to handle their daily life. They may be really focused on topics that interest them and discuss them nonstop. But they have a much harder time socially.
Pervasive developmental disorder, not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS). This mouthful of a diagnosis included most children whose autism was more severe than Asperger’s syndrome, but not as severe as autistic disorder.
Autistic disorder. This older term is further along the autism spectrum than Asperger’s and PDD-NOS. It includes the same types of symptoms, but at a more intense level.
Childhood disintegrative disorder. This was the rarest and most severe part of the spectrum. It described children who develop normally and then quickly lose many social, language, and mental skills, usually between ages 2 and 4. Often, these children also developed a seizure disorder.
But, as Francis warns, children should be diagnosed using a pencil so the diagnosis can be erased down the road when everyone realizes that children’s behavior changes as they grow…that there is no abnormality of the brain involved.
If Secretary Kennedy is really interested in getting to the bottom of the autism epidemic perhaps it’s time to haul in the grand poohbahs of psychiatry and hold their feet to the fire over these “written in pencil” diagnoses. This isn’t rocket science. In fact, psychiatric diagnosing isn’t science at all. With each new psychiatric manual, the rate of autism cases has exploded.
Secretary Kennedy should take Francis at his word. Secretary Kennedy should accept Francis’s “mea culpa” and his conclusion that the autism diagnosis is not “stable over time” and “so often unreliable.”
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