Time-Slip Common In Autism

Neuroskeptic notes that a phenomena known as time-slip has been associated with autism spectrum disorders in Japan but not been discussed in the psychiatric literature elsewhere. The comments to his blog post suggest that the association is in fact widespread, despite the fact that it hasn't been discussed formally in the academic literature on autism.

The omission sheds light on a larger issue, which is the failure of mental health researchers to thoroughly characterize mental health conditions once a bare bones set of diagnostic criteria that are sufficient to but mental health conditions into boxes have been established. Once the box is in place, it is easy to let inertia take hold and accept it uncritically, so this concern may extend to a wide variety of formally recognized mental health conditions. The hope would be that identification of non-diagnostic traits associated with particular mental health condition, like time-slip in autism, might help us to better understand what is going on in those conditions.