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| Re: Railfans and Asperger's Syndrome - find out for yourself (89693) | |||
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Re: Railfans and Asperger's Syndrome - find out for yourself |
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Posted by Mark Michalovic on Fri May 27 08:52:38 2005, in response to Re: Railfans and Asperger's Syndrome - find out for yourself, posted by Max Roberts on Fri May 27 08:40:41 2005. Again I think it is a matter of degrees. If the personality traits are mild, they don't constitute either a syndrome or a disease. When they become debilitating, then it becomes the proper domain of mental health professionals. And if a set of debilitating symptoms occur together often enough, then they may properly be called a syndrome.I emphasize "debilitating" for a reason. If the condition is not debilitating, then you're right, there is no reason to use words like "syndrome" or any real label at all. But there are cases where these symptoms are debilitating to the point where the where the help of mental health professionals is needed. Such cases are real and must be distinguished from cases where such personality traits are not debilitating. Also, I want to stress again the difference between a syndrome and a disease. To call a condition a disease means you are attributing all its symptoms to a common cause, and usually that you can identify this cause. To call a condition a syndrome is not so bold a claim. You're merely claiming that such-and-such symptoms have been seen together in a number of patients, but you are not claiming to know the cause, nor that the symptoms have a common cause. By this definition, AIDS was a syndrome, but has "graduated" to disease status. Meanwhile, debilitating cases of Asperger's remain a syndrome. Mark |
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