Asperger's and the professions

Lisa Nowak, a fallen astronaut, probably has Asperger's syndrome. There are interesting implications for how psychiatry needs to evolve to manage high functioning adults with autism-spectrum disorders who begin to decompensate ...

Be the Best You can Be: An astronaut with Asperger's

...My personal sense is that individuals with Aperger's, and with high-IQ autism (the definition of both is famously inexact, they likely overlap) can do extremely well in some settings. They do, like all of us*, retain weaknesses they must continue to compensate for. I don't know how much of a role Lisa's Aperger's played in her tragedy, but I suspect the combination of obsessive-compulsive disorder, Asperger's and depression was just the 'right' wrong mix. As psychiatry continues its sluggish and difficult transformation into a scientific trade, there will be more of an emphasis on how persons with austism, Asperger's, attention-deficit disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder can leverage their strengths and offset their disabilities, and how decompensation can be recognized and individually managed...