Why fewer people now call themselves Asperger's, a diagnosis retired in 2013
For about two decades Asperger syndrome was an official diagnosis. Then psychiatry folded it into autism spectrum disorder, and a 2018 book showed that Hans Asperger, whose name it carried, had been complicit in the Nazi killing of disabled children. In one set of polls, self-identification with the label fell from 51 to 19 percent.
Asperger was an Austrian paediatrician who in 1944 wrote about children in his care who found friendship hard, missed other people's gestures and feelings, talked at length about favourite subjects and were physically clumsy. The English psychiatrist Lorna Wing gave the syndrome his name in 1976. The modern idea of it took shape in 1981, and it entered the World Health Organization's classification in 1990, taking effect in 1993, and the American psychiatric manual in 1994.
It was described by a pattern rather than a single sign: difficulty with social interaction, narrow and repetitive interests and routines, but no significant delay in language or cognitive development. Intense focus on one topic, one-sided talk, flat intonation and clumsiness were typical without being required. It was generally seen as a milder category, and how it differed from so-called high-functioning autism was never clear; its validity as a separate diagnosis was questioned from the start.
The American manual dropped it in 2013, and the WHO followed with a revision that came into force in 2022, both merging it into a single autism spectrum. That change was itself controversial, but it reflected a unified view of autism rather than any verdict on people already diagnosed, and many kept using the term as part of their identity until Edith Sheffer's book Asperger's Children appeared.
Causes remain poorly understood: heritability is high, but no genetics have been pinned down, environment likely plays a part, and brain scans show no shared marker. An estimate from 2015 put the number affected at 37.2 million people, about 0.5 percent of the world's population. Males are diagnosed more often, and females usually later. Britain's NHS says curing autism should not be the goal, and management focuses on education, training and social support, although evidence for specific interventions is limited. Traits often become less visible in adulthood, while social difficulties tend to persist.
Source: Asperger syndrome
