American Psychiatric Association's soon-to-be-released Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition, the DSM-V, recognizes the overuse of the label autism. The label gets out of hand as it evolves into another alphabet soup in the form of ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder). Once the word 'spectrum' is inserted, the label casts a much bigger net and includes many disorders that share little of the original core characteristics, namely, social aloneness and inability to process multiple stimuli. Many friendly but socially awkward people are now called autistic, same as many formerly diagnosed Asperger persons. The result? The number of autistic people have increase more than six folds in the last 15 years.

I treated a four-year-old Korean American girl a few years ago, who was diagnosed as autistic by three psychologists from the Autism Clinic of UCLA. The diagnosis was based on her inability to communicate in English, lack of eye-contact, and ignoring of adult interaction in the testing situation.After observing and working with her at her home, my own analysis was simple -- she wasn't autistic but had delayed language (both Korean and English) development and she was shy with strangers. I designed an intensive English training program and short-term recall practice for her, set up a home-school kindergarten program, and instructed the mother to speak only English, no matter how broken it was, to her. (Father spoke fluent English but was away a lot.) Once she felt comfortable with me, she was friendly, sociable and even joked with me in her own brand of English. After nine months of treatment, she reached grade level for English and math, and socialized with me and peers readily. When UCLA called to say they now had an opening for her in their autistic program (there was a waiting list to get in.) and urged the parents to enroll, they wisely declined. Today, she attends 3rd grade in a competitive private school with mostly A's and has playdates with friends. Did I cure her autism? No. I just trained the skills that were deficient. One could not imagine what could have happened had she gone to an 'autism' school.

The use of ASD allows many children to receive special funding, a situation in itself beneficial for them. The new DSM-V will make many no longer qualified for medical, psychological and social services under the diagnosis of autism. A Yale University study estimates that "up to 40% of those with autism as defined by the current criteria would be excluded from such a diagnosis." Many 'high-functioning' children and adults would be excluded, which would also significantly affects the 'cure rate' as published in literature, since most of the cures happen in high-functioning children. But when a diagnostic label gets overused and misued, it loses its purpose of pointing to specific treatment strategies.

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