President of Colombia Does Not Have Asperger’s Syndrome
The President of Colombia does not have Asperger’s syndrome, according to a post that the president himself made.
The controversy surrounding whether the President of Colombia has Asperger’s syndrome has been clarified, at least for now, as Gustavo Petro himself denied what his brother had said.
Through his X account, President Gustavo Petro commented on the diagnosis that he and Juan Fernando Petro had allegedly received for Asperger’s syndrome.
It was Juan Fernando Petro, the president’s brother, who initially told a media outlet that his brother had the syndrome.
In an interview with the program “Los Informantes,” Juan Fernando Petro claimed that the President of the Republic had been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome.
However, Juan Fernando Petro later retracted his statement and stated that the President of Colombia does not have Asperger’s syndrome.
In his post, the president not only questioned the media’s relationship with his family but also expressed surprise at what his brother had revealed on the “Los Informantes” program on Canal Caracol.
He said, “It left me speechless. Something is going on with my brother.
“He strongly denied having been diagnosed with this disorder. “I have never received a diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome. It is impossible that we were diagnosed with this syndrome as children because this condition was only first diagnosed in 1994,” the president explained in his tweet.
He added that by that year, he was already 34 years old, and furthermore, this syndrome ceased to be considered a specific illness according to diagnostic criteria in 2013, as “science rejected it as a specific illness.”
This assertion aligns with the information provided by the Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital, which indicates that until that year, Asperger’s was considered a condition diagnosed through psychological evaluation.
President of Colombia Does Not Have Asperger’s Syndrome
The President’s message was posted hours after Juan Fernando clarified what had been mentioned in the interview.
Juan Fernando stated, “The psychologist said, the school psychologist, one afternoon, without exams, without neurological studies, simply said, ‘Oh, your brother also exhibits similar behavior, he must have the same thing.'” This is what led to the claim.
Juan Fernando further explained that his statements in the TV interview had been taken out of context, and portions of the interview had been edited to imply a diagnosis for him and his brother.
“I gave an interview on the ‘Los Informantes’ program under conditions that turned out to be different, and I have to protest and make my voice heard in this regard… because they completely took what was said out of context and what was intended to be said,” he explained to the radio station.
He also mentioned that he had shared this as an anecdote from their high school years and that there is no evidence to confirm that both of them have this syndrome.
In the report mentioned, the revelation about the diagnosis given by a psychologist to him and his brother emerged. “When adolescence began, there was a dramatic change in both him and me. My dad took us to a psychologist, and the psychologist said we had autism, Asperger’s syndrome,” he recounted.
Thus, the controversy ends, confirming that the President of Colombia does not have Asperger’s syndrome.
Also read: Luis Miguel’s Anger in Chile.
