THE following adjudication has been issued by the Australian Press Council.

The Press Council has considered a complaint about an article published on the news.com.au site on 23 November 2012, titled "Autistic man convicted of murdering WA mum". It concerned the conviction on that day of a man for the murder of his mother.

By Shaun Heasley, August 5, 2013

When offered intensive, specialized training, a new study finds that young people with autism — even those with challenging behaviors — can be highly successful on the job.

Researchers followed a group of high school students, some of whom received traditional special education offerings while others were provided with specialized training and internships through a program called “Project SEARCH with Autism Supports.”

The ABC has a short video story, arising from APAC'13, about schools in Australia failing students with autism (see http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-10/school-system-failing-autistic-ch…). The item specifically says that schools do not address bullying appropriately.

The ABC has a short video story, arising from APAC'13, about schools in Australia failing students with autism (see http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-10/school-system-failing-autistic-ch…). The item specifically says that schools do not address bullying appropriately.

A man "crippled" by a lifelong autism spectrum disorder who became an accountant and then defrauded the Tax Office of $2.4 million in GST refunds has been jailed for a maximum of four years.

It was argued that jail would "terrify and traumatise" Philip Solimon Tadros who learned by rote to pass VCE with a university entry score of 65, completed his course but took six years to gain a practising certificate.

Autism — a neural developmental disorder characterised by impaired social interaction and communication — affects lots of Australians, including famous ones. Media personality Chloe Maxwell and her husband, former NRL player Mat Rogers, spoke publically about their son Max’s autism.

FROM Brooklyn in north Sydney to its namesake in New York City.

Ben McCarthy - who has Asperger's syndrome - is the state's youngest international award winning filmmaker at only 12 years old.

Inspired by the famous Wallace and Gromit series, the pint-sized film director took out the Trop Jr film festival and a gong at The Art of Brooklyn Film Festival in New York with his claymation creation.

By LIA SPENCER

A SPECIAL school in Casey has defended their methods of dealing with students who display challenging behaviours.

Several parents have pulled their students from Marnebek School in Cranbourne due to complaints about the school’s discipline policies and the “prison-like” outside settings.

One of the parents has taken her complaints to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) on the grounds of discrimination, and use of seclusion and restraints.

By Maia Szalavitz / May 07, 2013

Just weeks before psychiatry’s new diagnostic “bible”—the DSM 5— is set to be released, the world’s major funder of mental health research has announced that it will not use the new diagnostic system to guide its scientific program, a change some observers have called “a cataclysm” and “potentially seismic.” Dr. Thomas Insel, the director of the National Institute on Mental Health, said in a blog post last week that “NIMH will be re-orienting its research away from DSM categories.”

The change will not immediately affect patients. But in the long run, it could completely redefine mental health conditions and developmental disorders. All of the current categories — from autism to schizophrenia — could be replaced by genetic, biochemical or brain-network labeled classifications. Psychiatrists, who are already reeling from the conflict-filled birth of the fifth edition of the Diagnostical and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, are feeling whipsawed.

Insel, for his part, is lobbying for a more comprehensive approach. For scientific purposes, he argues, the DSM may have outlived its usefulness. He writes:

Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure. In the rest of medicine, this would be equivalent to creating diagnostic systems based on the nature of chest pain… Imagine deciding that EKGs were not useful because many patients with chest pain did not have EKG changes. That is what we have been doing for decades when we reject a biomarker because it does not detect a DSM category. We need to begin collecting the genetic, imaging, physiologic, and cognitive data to see how all the data – not just the symptoms – cluster and how these clusters relate to treatment response…Patients with mental disorders deserve better.

By Loren Grush / Published May 21, 2013 / FoxNews.com

The most recent revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) has arrived, and the latest changes have caused divisions among those in the psychiatric community.

Often touted as the psychiatrist’s “Bible,” the DSM is published by the American Psychiatric Association and establishes the almost universal standard by which doctors classify, diagnose and ultimately treat mental disorders – making it an essential part of the psychiatric profession. The DSM is utilized not only by clinicians, but researchers and health insurance companies as well. Even government officials take interest in the DSM’s criteria in order to determine grant funding, insurance coverage and new health care policies.

The latest version is the DSM’s fifth edition, and it is the manual’s first major revision in nearly 20 years since the publication of the DSM-IV in 1994. The DSM-5’s release brings some radical new changes, which have been met with both praise and disgust from mental health professionals. Some of the most highly debated changes include the elimination of Asperger’s disorder and the addition of a few new controversial conditions such as cannabis withdrawal, gambling addiction and the highly contested disruptive mood dysregulation disorder (DMD).

So what do these changes mean for those currently dealing with mental health disorders? Read on to learn more about the DSM-5’s biggest changes and the possible impact they may have on mental health care.

Combination of autism spectrum disorders into single category

One of the most publicized changes in the DSM-5 involves grouping all of the subcategories of autism into a single category known as autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This move effectively eliminates previously separate diagnoses of autism – including autistic disorder, Asperger’s disorder, childhood disintegrative disorder and pervasive development disorder “not otherwise specified” (PDD-NOS).