Radio 4 Out of the Ordinary

This was my concern as well. Members of the public who know next to nothing about the condition will not be educated by this program. Asperger's needs to be seen as it is - a serious and disabling condition- and should not be trivialised or misrepresented. I would expect better from the BBC.

I heard the program too. It did seem very unbalanced in its agaenda - it certainly shone a great deal of doubt on the diagnosis of Aspergers.

It seemed a pretty poor quality program. I think they just interviewed people that suited their agenda. The problem is that listeners may not question the validity and integrity of the program.

Just to say I've flagged this with our press team. Thanks for posting about it.

And I agree completely DaisyGirl. Ignorant members of the public may well get the wrong idea from this programme and assume that Asperger's is not a disabling condition that negatively affects a person's life-chances, but simply an extreme form of introversion. They might think that it mainly or only occurs in men, and that it is simply because more pressure is put on men these days to perform emotionally. And it is really not helpful for a programme to uncritically suggest that Hitler, Darwin etc. had Asperger's, when there is no evidence to suggest this. I don't think you could call Dawin or Hitler disabled, although Darwin was certainly obsessive and prone to health anxiety, while Hitler was a psychologically disturbed psychopath.

I just hope my ex's family don't hear this programme as they are firm believers that aspergers can be cured,  and some of them even believe that it is my parenting that is to blame for their difficulties.  

This publicity would only endorse their belief to the detriment of the children.

Sadly, I think the programme is more pernicious than this. I think it is trying to state that Asperger's really does not exist as a condition that requires any comprehension or understanding on the part of society.

By the way the presenter and producer was Jolyon Jenkins.

He twice asked the man with Asperger's why how he felt in the loud and busy environments was not just being "intoverted". He was clearly implying that the Asperger's diagnosis could be easily explained by just being a shy person. There were multiple instances of this type of appraoch in the programme. Really this programme was very very wrong. Think about all those parents (and adults) on here who are encountering teachers, care workers, other people in the position of power over their child/themselves, ignorant family members who are stating to their faces that Asperger's is "just a phase, he will grow out of it", you can "train Asperger's out of them, they just have to try harder not to have it", "I don't believe in Asperger's you are just shy and selfish". That is the viewpoint this programme is peddaling. It is very dangerous.

Yes, Asperger's is not a mental illness, neither is autism, but he really doesn't understand why it is in the DSM, this is just a consequence of where an understanding of a condition would be. As the consequences of the condition have a major impact on an individuals day to day life it has to be dealt with by one branch of a profession, and psychiatry and psychology is the only logical place to put it, an acceptance by psychiatry and psychology that people with Asperger's are different and cannot be medicated/given therapy to act NT would help a lot, but at least there is now a small understanding of the condition. Imagine what would happen if autism was emoved from DSM, and only those with a very serious version of autism (no language, unable to feed or dress themselves etc.) were diagnosed with a developmental disorder. ALL support services would disappear completely, everyone not coping with the NT world would be diagnosed with a complex set of mental illnesses with no reference to autism and the differnt way we perceive and react to stimuli in the environment. All of the understanding that has been built up over the years would disappear.

In addition this programme implied that diagnoses was based on a simple questionnaire and the test of understanding the emotion protrayed by those photos of the eyes. If this is the way that psychologists are diagnosing Asperger's it would not be right. Diagnoses as an adult involves al investigation of the person from childhood, or it should, as well as these types of tests, but the programme did not explore this at all.

The definite tone was. Women think there men are too different from them and are not fulfilling their emotional needs in a relationship, so they take a siple online test, go to a psychologist get diagnosed with Asperger's and then train their men to be better at fulfilling their emotional needs. Not good.

I listened to this, and objected to the use of the term 'mental illness' to describe Asperger's, when Asperger's itself is not a mental health issue but a neuro-developmental one. It is also, of course, erroneous to suggest that you can grow out of the condition.

However, I do concur to some extent with Allen Francis, the chief editor of DSM1V, who believes that Asperger's has been watered down ; the crucial diagnostic criteria of 'clinically significant' is open to a great deal of clinical subjective judgement. Whether or not this is a bad thing is open to debate, and I am not clear myself on what I think about it, but it is worrying to hear far-fetched claims about both living and dead celebrities who may or may not have been on the spectrum: Hitler (no way, he was extremely charismatic, capable of manipulation, and was an obvious psychopath!), Bill Gates, Einstein (maybe, but could have simply been an eccentric genius), Newton, Darwin.....  This desire to diagnose any remotely strange, eccentric, or psychopathic individual with Asperger's does a disservice to those who really are affected by spreading misinformation and unsubstantiated opinions.

This programme did nothing to challenge the notion that more men have Asperger's than women (while male over-diagnosis may occur , women are often overlooked because of the male bias and cultural norms). So all in all the programme was disappointing, although it certainly kept my interest for its duration.