PDD-NOS and Autism? Could someone please tell me the difference!?

PDD-NOS = Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified

This condition just means the child is not developing correctly though the neuropsychologist hasn't pinned down the exact cause. Unfortunately the NOS designation after a lot of neurological disorders tends to be a catch all for psychologist when they need to give a diagnosis and simply don't know.



Austism is a specific neurological disorder that has at times been categorized as a PDD. It is actually a spectrum of disorders since how it presents itself varies greatly. On the low end of the spectrum, you get kids who are either retarded and nonverbal, simply nonverbal but with normal capacity for learning and on the high end you have kids with Aspergers who may be near genious IQ but socially dyslexic.PDD-NOS and Autism? Could someone please tell me the difference!?
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Best of luck!PDD-NOS and Autism? Could someone please tell me the difference!?
Autism is a spectrum of disorders, Pervasive Developmental Disorder- Not otherwise Specified is on the spectrum, and is given as a diagnosis when a child does not have all the characteristics of Autism. Often children's diagnosis will change to Autism, or Asperger Syndrome.PDD-NOS and Autism? Could someone please tell me the difference!?
Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified used to be more often called ''Multiple Handicapped''--as in mental retardation plus seizures, cerebral palsy plus retardation, spina bifida plus retardation, etc. The benefit to this new label, PPD NOS, is that the word ''retardation'' does not have to be mentioned. The problem is that PDD NOS is now part of the Autism [Spectrum Disorder] continuum. New research results on persons with autism now contradict old studies of ''Rain Man''-type of classic autistic persons nearly every day.



In the past, autistic persons were furious that autistic persons were assessed as retarded (or ''functionally retarded''). Now many PPD NOS persons are called persons with ''austism,'' though more accurately, they fall along the current definition of the ''autism spectrum'' of disorders. The term ''retarded'' rarely is discussed directly.
Pervasive Developmental Disorder - None Other Specified is just a fancy way for your doctor to say that your child's developmental pattern is not normal, and he doesn't know why. This has fallen under the Autism Spectrum Disorder chart, and this has caused an artificial spike in the increase of autism diagnoses.



The trouble is that PDD is a misnomer. Pervasive Developmental Disorder is not really pervasive; there are a lot of areas in a person's development that it won't affect. The other problem is that it's a suspect diagnosis. It becomes an excuse for a doctor who doesn't have the answers for the patient's problems to hide behind a catch-all diagnostic term. It would be much kinder for doctors to tell the real truth to these patients. Unfortunately, people don't like to hear the words, "I don't know."



The truth is there's a lot we don't know about the human brain. It's very likely that most of the patients who are being diagnosed with PDD-NOS actually suffer from other conditions. For example, I recently read about a young girl who was persistently misdiagnosed with autism and ADD, only for her optometrist to discover belatedly that she suffers from convergence insufficiency. This means that her eyes can't focus effectively when an object is brought close-up to her, and she often sees double. In this way, PDD-NOS hides other conditions that people are suffering from, preventing them from getting the proper treatment. In the same way Sensory Integration Dysfunction can masquerade as PDD-NOS or Asperger's autism, especially since SID does not qualify the patient for government services.



The diagnostic criteria for autism have been broadened dramatically over the last twenty years. It used to be that only patients with full-blown classic Kanner's autism (think "Rain Man") ever got diagnosed. Kanner's autism is a much more secure diagnosis, because the diagnostic criteria are more specific and strict, because the symptoms are far more severe. Now because of the broadening of the diagnostic criteria, the term "autism" can apply to almost anybody.