Autism Features

Autism is a disease that often is as devastating in its effects on the family as on the sufferer. Autism is a developmental handicap that impairs the ability to process social and linguistic information, including the autistic person's emotions and those of others. Observers describe autism in various ways, but generally they see a helpless child trapped inside a syndrome that prevents them from relating normally to the world and that distorts learning, destroys emotional stability, and often produces a sense of hopelessness in child and parent alike.

Many childhood disabilities and emotional disorders resemble autism, especially in very young children, and these include symbiotic disorder, reactive attachment disorder, and nonverbal learning disabilities, among others. Even a child showing some autistic features may not be autistic, which is why careful and accurate diagnosis is essential. The younger the child, the harder it is to make an accurate diagnosis. The earliest conceivable age for an autism diagnosis is two years old, and a reliable diagnosis for classic autism usually is not possible until at least age three. Most Asperger's Syndrome children are not diagnosed until they reach grade school because of their relatively high level of functioning. At the same time, early intervention is associated with a more positive outcome for the autistic child, but such intervention is still not possible without an accurate diagnosis (Lay, 1993, 23-24).

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t diagnostic practice uses somewhat wider criteria making the incidence much higher: one or two in 1,000 births, about the same as Down's syndrome. Two to four times as many boys as girls are affected. Autism was long thought to be a purely psychological disorder without an organic basis. No obvious neurological problems were found in the early investigations. The autistic children did not necessarily have low intellectual ability often looked physically normal, so psychogenic theories were proposed and taken seriously for many years. These theories focused on the idea that a child could become autistic because of some existentially threatening experience, such as a lack of maternal bonding or a disastrous experience of rejection which might drive an infant to withdraw into an inner world of fantasy that the outside world could not penetrate. There is no empirical evidence in support of these theories: They are unlikely to be supported because there are many instances of extreme rejection and deprivation in childhood, none of which have resulted in autism. Unfortunately, therapies vaguely based on such notions are still putting pressure on parents to accept a burden of guilt for the supposedly avoidable and reversible brea

Category: Psychology - A