Past Issues

This overview reviews the evolution of the definition and diagnostic criteria of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The author starts to introduce the work on early infantile autism by Leo Kanner and the work on autistic psychopathy by Hans Asperger. Then, he describes how infantile autism is defined in ICD-9-CM, and pervasive developmental disorders in DSM-III and DSM-III-R, how autistic disorder and Asperger’s disorder as subtypes of pervasive developmental disorders in DSM-IV, as well as how ASD as a single category is listed in DSM-5. With all those background information, the author warns the impacts of DSM-5 ASD on future studies of ASD epidemiology and genetics in Taiwan. Overall, it seems that the implementation of DSM-5 ASD may cause more negative results than provides positive influences. Investigators of ASD in Taiwan must be mindful of the poten-tially negative impacts caused by the DSM-5ASD.