When I started to think about which direction I wanted to take this piece, I was overwhelmed. I could tell you about my personal experience with this disease, the cases I’ve worked on in my professional life, the warning signs to look for in your children, or how to handle transitions with children diagnosed with autism. The list is endless. When it comes right down to it, I think it would be best to focus on raising the awareness of what autism really is and how to go about getting screened for it. That is the point of autism awareness month, ya know?
Autism is growing at alarming rates. Based on prevalence statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2007), the annual growth rate is 10-17%. 1 in every 150 children fall somewhere on the autism spectrum. Data has been gathered from The US Department of Special Education and presented in graph form for more of a visual impact of what is going on in our nation’s schools. At this point, there has been no evidence found that shows autism knows cultural or socioeconomic boundaries. It can affect any family, and any child. It is four times more prevalent in boys than in girls.
It is important to remember that autism is a spectrum disorder, with some people functioning high on the spectrum, while others face very severe deficiencies.
According to the Center for Disease Control, autism can “cause substantial impairments in social interaction and communication and there is a presence of unusual behaviors and interests.” I think there is a wealth of information available on the social and communicative aspects of development, so I’m going to focus on the third piece, stereotypy. A lot of people associate the “unusual behaviors and interests” part of autism with Dustin Hoffman’s character as Rainman, but there’s more to the behaviors than meets the eye.
The unusual behaviors, also known as stereotypy, that people with autism commonly display serve a great function in their world. There are many theories out there as to what causes people with autism do this. The two most commonly believed reasons are self-stimulation and soothing in an over-stimulating environment. The self-stimulation that is sought when someone has this repertoire of behaviors can be for the visual, auditory, tactile, vestibular, smell, or taste senses. Here is a list of the different kinds of stereotypic behaviors that appear in the different senses. As for being in an over-stimulating environment, I think we can all relate to that to a certain extent. The difference between us and individuals with autism is that we use more socially acceptable coping strategies. When an autistic person gets in an environment like this, they can go into a state of sensory-overload. As a way of coping, they may engage in these behaviors in order to focus their attention inward and block-out the environment.
I will do a series of blogs over the following two Mondays, so that interested readers can learn more about the early warning signs of autism, how to go about getting a diagnosis, the different types of treatment available, as well as other information that I hope can help. Again, the point of this blog series and autism awareness month is to raise people’s awareness and increase their education around what has been dubbed “the fastest growing disability in America.”
Southerner
Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge. This was very informative. I’m looking forward to your next two pieces.