ABSTRACT
Psychiatrists, psychologists, and neurologists have struggled for several decades to understand, diagnose, categorize, and treat severe developmental and behavioral disturbances closely linked in their clinical manifestation by delay and deviance in social, communicative and cognitive development. The latest Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV 1994) categorized these clinical entities under a broad umbrella diagnosis of Pervasive Developmental Disorder, with Autistic Disorder, Rett’s Disorder, Childhood Disintegrative Disorder, Asperger’s Disorder, and Pervasive Developmental Disorder, not otherwise specified as individual entities.
