I have been thinking about this a lot lately and I have to say that I have arrived at the opinion that NVLD is not a useful description when one is attempting to get or keep needed services for a struggling child.
More often than not, the students who are labeled as NLVD or NLD, meet most of the criteria for an ADHD or autism diagnoses but can not check the DSM's last box or have an unusual presentation. The symptoms which land them an NVLD designation tend to be challenges with mathematical reasoning and weak visuo-spatial skills. (A constellation that could theoretically place them in between what we formerly called Aspergers and classical autism.) As a parent of an adolescent on the autism spectrum who was originally diagnosed with Aspergers disorder, I now feel pretty strongly that combining the formerly separate types of ASD, PDD-NOS, CDD and Aspergers, into one category in 2013 was a mistake that increases the challenges of getting appropriate support and locks many out altogether. I also wonder if the combining of these subgroups enhanced the need for NVLD as a category?
When functioning in my role as parent advocate, I have come to feel that the NVLD nomenclature is a description used when the diagnostician struggles to identify one component of the DSM's needed ASD criteria. I feel NLVD has become something of a catchall to absorb the children who couldn't be made to check every box. Credentialed evaluators disagree on what exactly this label means and educators struggle to understand what the impact of this non-diagnosis is on learning and social emotional functioning, creating unfortunate barriers to specialized supports. I am confused why the concrete adherence to the list is so pervasive for diagnoses made almost entirely on symptomatologies, not genetic or medical data.
Since less than 10% of ASD can be confirmed by genetic testing, diagnosis is largely a result of observing and naming outward behaviors. Specifically; impaired social functioning, unusual sensory experience, language or communication impairment and restrictive or repetitive behaviors or interests must be present. NVLD may have become prevalent in answer to the students who were on the cusp of an ASD diagnosis under the new DSM V rules, but in my opinion, it is failing the kids it intends to describe.
A link to an interesting description of the controversial description is given below. Check it out and let me know your thoughts.
