A significant change in the DSM-5 was eliminating the Asperger's disorder diagnosis, which is now subsumed under the new diagnostic category, ASD. Asperger's disorder shares several features with autism, such as significant difficulties in social interaction and nonverbal communication and restricted or repetitive patterns of behavior and interests. However, Asperger's disorder differed from autism because individuals with this diagnosis had normal linguistic and cognitive development. In DSM-5, the diagnoses of Asperger's disorder and autism were collapsed into the ASD category based on the rationale that they reflected the same disorder at varying degrees of severity.

1-What do you think about this change in classification?

2-What are the arguments for and against combining these disorders into a single category?

3- What positive and negative consequences do you think this diagnostic re-organization might have?