Health & Wellness
Celebrate Differences April is Autism Acceptance Month By Tracy McCoy
I
write about many things that I know little to nothing about. I research, interview, dig and give it 100% because there are some topics that I think are that important. I am not a medical professional and am not attempting to offer any recommendations or medical advice. If you suspect that you or someone you love could be affected by autism my only recommendation is to talk with your doctor about your concerns. The word autism was first used in 1908 to describe patients who were especially withdrawn and self-adsorbed. These patients were thought to exhibit schizophrenic behavior and were therefore diagnosed as such. Largely ignored for 35 years, a child psychiatrist Leo Kanner, M.D. published a paper describing a group of children as being highly intelligent but displaying “a powerful desire for aloneness” and “an obsessive insistence on persistent sameness.” He gave it the diagnosis of “early infantile autism”. A year later scientist Hans Asperger described a milder form of autism now known as Asperger’s syndrome. The cases he was reporting on were all male and were considered highly intelligent, having difficulty with social interactions and specific obsessive interests. Sadly many children were institutionalized because their condition was so grossly misunderstood. In the late 70s research indicated that autism was largely caused by genetics and biological differences in brain development. It wasn’t until 1980 that “infantile autism” was listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders for the first time. It was also officially separated from childhood schizophrenia. By the end of that decade it was defined as “autism disorder” and included a checklist of diagnostic criteria. In 1988 the movie Rainman was released starring Dustin Hoffman as an autistic savant with photographic memory and an incredible ability to calculate huge numbers in his head. While the movie was important because it raised awareness of the disorder, it was critical to note that not every child on the autism spectrum possessed these skills. 56 - www.laurelofnortheastgeorgia.com - April 2022
In the early 90s the federal government made autism a special education category, identifying children on the spectrum and offering special services to them. In the 90s, the notion that autism could be caused by vaccines, specifically the MMR vaccine, was widely spread. Vaccine manufacturers removed thimerosal, a preservative from vaccines due to public fears. Many believe that the vaccine-autism link has been debunked. Meanwhile throughout the 2000s there appears to be more autism diagnosed or recognized by health professionals. In 2009 the CDC estimated that 1 in 110 children have autism spectrum disorders up from 1 in 150 just two years earlier. They attributed the increase to improved screening and diagnostic techniques. Eventually the DSM places all subcategories of the condition under one umbrella diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This meant that Asperger’s Syndrome was no longer considered a separate condition. ASD was then defined by two categories: 1 – Impaired social communication and/or interaction. 2 – Restricted and/or repetitive behaviors. All of this to say that it took 105 years to get from giving it a name to trying to understand it. I realize that one of the challenges of ASD is that it is as individualized as the people who have it. Why is it that we can send a photo across the world through a telephone in 10 seconds and put a pig valve in a human heart but I in 110 children are so misunderstood and their parents are left to try to figure out how to help their little ones. When parents or teachers recognize that a child is not following what is considered “a typical developmental course”, they turn to the experts like psychologists and medical professionals for a diagnosis. Often these children appear to have an intellectual disability, sensory processing issues or problems with hearing or vision. This makes autism even more challenging to diagnose. Conditions such as these can also occur with Autism and it can be confusing to families when they are given
