PEDIATRICS: MENTALLY ILL PARENTS AND AUTISM
By Julie Obradovic
Maybe I'm crazy. Maybe you're crazy. This week a new study published in the Journal of Pediatrics (HERE) says if you're the parent of an autistic child, there's a good chance you are.
The large scale population study done in Sweden attempts to conclusively link psychiatric conditions in parents with an increased risk for Autism in their children. Other studies on a smaller scale have suggested the link in the past.
My immediate reaction to the result was one of extreme anger. I'm not sure why this one made me so mad, whether it was the last straw on a pile of stupid studies being done to ultimately blame my child's Autism on my husband and I (you know, old dads and too much television), or the implication that when all is said and done, I am simply more likely to be insane (it's only the mom's, by the way). As a friend suggested, this is why it's good I don't have a gun in the house.
After calming down, I sat down to pick it apart. My intention was to do so page by page, discrediting it and putting it behind me like the other studies. I grabbed my highlighter, my calculator, and got to work.
Initially I found some interesting things. For starters, the study took place in Sweden and was partially funded by the CDC. It's fascinating to me that the CDC can support an investigation into this issue (psychotic parents having psychotic kids), but not support a vaccinated versus unvaccinated study. How insulting.
Moreover, less than 10% of the participants in the study were of non-Nordic descent, and yet, the parents found to have a significant psychiatric condition and a child with Autism were from Africa and Asia. Any chance those sample sizes just weren't big enough?
Then there's the fact that 6 of the mothers in the study were diagnosed themselves as having Autism (classified as Autistic Disorder, Asperger's Syndrome or PDD-NOS), but NONE of the father's were. Even better, 5 of those 6 Autistic mothers did NOT go on to have a child with Autism. Considering that 77% of the children identified as having Autism are BOYS, and that the point of this study is to establish the link that Autism is genetic; doesn't that seem a bit odd?
I mean, truly, if there is no epidemic and the rate of Autism has stayed consistent throughout history, although now we're just better at diagnosing it AND it's genetic, how is it possible that only 6 parents in the entire study aged 47-76 had the diagnosis (all moms and all clinically evaluated for psychiatric conditions including Autism), versus the 1227 children aged 0-32 who do? How is that at all consistent?
If the answer is that people with Autism don't usually marry and have children, then how is it being passed on genetically? And how come more Autistic mothers in the study had NON-autistic children? And how come there are zero Autistic fathers anywhere? It can’t be better diagnosis because these parents were specifically studied because they HAVE a psychiatric diagnosis…and it ain't Autism. What the hell?
The explanation is provided by the authors: The parents have "Autism Light" (my term). In their words, they possess "…(a) familial predisposition, perhaps genetic, that presents differently in the parent than in the child..." They have "...Personality traits similar to, but not as severe as, the defining features of Autism..."
Aaaahhh, now I get it. I AM Autistic, just barely.
More frustrating, the study claims to re-establish the significant link between old father's and Autism. Again, none of the father's in this study has Autism and less than 1% of the 1227 of them with an Autistic child were over the age of 50 when their children were born.
Right there we know the world is not being populated by a bunch of older (autistic) dads, and that even if there is a link between them and their offspring developing Autism, it is only that they are more likely to have a child with Autism and not that there are more of them having children. There aren't more old dads. There simply seems to be a greater likelihood that older dads will have Autistic children than younger dads. Big difference.
Lastly, the point of the study was to look at the prevalence rate of psychiatric diagnoses (including drug and alcohol abuse) among parents who have children with Autism to see if there is a link between the two. The authors considered the timing and classification of the parental diagnosis, determining whether or not they had a psychiatric diagnosis prior to or after their child's birth and prior to or after their child's Autism diagnosis. And surprisingly, they did factor in the likelihood of a parent having depression or something else after an Autism diagnosis (how thoughtful of them).
Still, they were able to determine that predominantly among African and Asian parents, moms of Autistic children were more likely to be schizophrenic and/or depressed, and dads were more likely to just be depressed. They were able to do this even though exactly 50% of the moms and 42% of the dads did not receive any psychiatric diagnosis until AFTER their baby was born.
You put all this together and the conclusion of the authors is this data supports evidence that "....parental psychiatric diagnoses in the aggregate were associated with a twofold increased risk of Autism among the children."
Well, all of the above concerns are just observational on my part. It's shocking to me that a study looking into the genetics of Autism, examining over 15,000 men and their children specifically for psychiatric diagnoses including Autism, finds not one father with the diagnosis himself but 944 of their boys (representing 77% of the children) who do… and it raises no red flags.
But red flags are not enough to make a real claim that the study is in anyway invalid. I'm just a mom who struggled miserably with statistics in college, and frankly, I have no expertise what-so-ever where they are concerned. Which made me stop and think...?
What if it's true?
In spite of all the concerns I identified, what if there really is a link between moms with schizophrenia being more likely to have children with Autism? What would that mean? What do we know about schizophrenia that would cross-over into Autism? Do they share similar pathologies? Are there established scientific evidence implicating metals or viruses or bacteria playing a role?
Something I read years ago about mercury and schizophrenia reminded me there is, so I started looking. With the help of some pretty knowledgeable people, I was able to uncover some startling commonalities.
Turns out people with schizophrenia have evidence of lower glutathione levels, mitochondrial dysfunction, oxidative stress, pre-natal infection, increased incidence of skin infections, cytokine imbalances, activated glial cells, elevated levels of heavy metals, central nervous system infections, and viruses such as herpes and mumps. Click on the condition for the link to the study.
I'm sure with extensive research there's more to add. The point is, here we have a psychiatric disorder with established links to heavy metals, viruses, bacteria, immune deficiency, mitochondrial dysfunction, and inflammation among women who are two times more likely to have children with a psychiatric disorder with established links to heavy metals, viruses, bacteria, immune deficiency, mitochondrial dysfunction, and inflammation.
In either disorder, no gene has been found to wrap up the cause into a nice little package. This means more likely than not something external is causing an internal train wreck resulting in behaviors that look psychiatric in nature but actually have biological causes in genetically susceptible people. This is precisely what we parents have been saying for years.
And it is precisely what the authors themselves conclude when they state, "Specific genes that might contribute to the complex constellation of factors leading to Autism or other psychiatric disorders have yet to be confirmed....the etiology of Autism is complex and likely involves multiple genes in combination with external factors. This allows for the possibility that Autism and other psychiatric disorders result from some common genes, possibly varying in expression and in combination with other factors."
Well, well, well. Turns out I'm not so crazy after all.
Too bad the American public just won’t hear that.
Julie Obradovic is a High School Spanish Teacher in the suburbs of Chicago where she lives with her husband and 3 beautiful children, one of whom is recovered from Autism. She is a member of the NAA, a Rescue Angel, and founder of the Southwest Suburban Biomedical Support Group. Last year she threw the First Annual Evening for ACE, a benefit that raised several thousand dollars for the Autism Center for Enlightenment, Dr. Anju Usman's not-for-profit organization.
While there are quite a number of rather deceitful studies around, especially in the pages of Pediatrics in my experience, my experience as a theorist needing to make sense of the combination of all the evidence leads me to say that virtually never do studies actually stoop to falsifying their data, and not that often to falsifying their inferences either.
My only agenda in the autism controversy is that I had already published a theory of autism, still totally unchallenged, years before (1982 - published 1993, see my url http://cogprints.org/5207 ). I've been struggling to finish a spectacular update review but I have been delayed for 3 years now because I am severely disabled by poisoning from 20 mercury fillings the NHS won't remove - they persist in deceits instead
(and on top of that a certain District Judge Truman and her colleagues colluded with my harassers in a false eviction action so I've been simply struggling to stay alive).
Anyway, to the point. My update will/would make very clear that the autism increase is mainly due to mercury from parents' amalgams. Mercury also causes psychosis. So this latest study's finding just fits into all this nicely thanks. It is not the slightest proof of a genetic link but rather an iatrogenic link instead.
Posted by: Robin P Clarke | May 10, 2008 at 02:41 PM
While there are quite a number of rather deceitful studies around, especially in the pages of Pediatrics in my experience, my experience as a theorist needing to make sense of the combination of all the evidence leads me to say that virtually never do studies actually stoop to falsifying their data, and not that often to falsifying their inferences either.
My only agenda in the autism controversy is that I had already published a theory of autism, still totally unchallenged, years before (1982 - published 1993, see my url http://cogprints.org/5207 ). I've been struggling to finish a spectacular update review but I have been delayed for 3 years now because I am severely disabled by poisoning from 20 mercury fillings the NHS won't remove - they persist in deceits instead
(and on top of that a certain District Judge Truman and her colleagues colluded with my harassers in a false eviction action so I've been simply struggling to stay alive).
Anyway, to the point. My update will/would make very clear that the autism increase is mainly due to mercury from parents' amalgams. Mercury also causes psychosis. So this latest study's finding just fits into all this nicely thanks. It is not the slightest proof of a genetic link but rather an iatrogenic link instead.
Posted by: Robin P Clarke | May 10, 2008 at 02:40 PM
Has anyone noticed where this study came from? Offit is employed by both of these institutions. I don't think it is a stretch to think he was involved. Teresa Binstock has been bringing this issue up for years, ever since they changed the protocol and started immunizing with minor illness.
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/121/5/898
Pediatric Research Consortium
Pediatric Generalist Research Group, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Departments of
Pediatrics
Biostatistics and Epidemiology, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Posted by: Cindy Stolten | May 08, 2008 at 12:12 PM
Have a go at this review of the journal article. Should soothe some frayed nerves here.
http://www.translatingautism.com/
Quote "99.4% of the children with autism did not have mothers with schizophrenia"
Posted by: doodle | May 08, 2008 at 11:31 AM
Fil Navarra,
Welcome! Have I seen you here before? You sound angry enough to fight for change, and there's plenty of opportunity for that at Age of Autism.
Will you join us?
There's work to be done and a battle to be fought.
Terri Lewis
Posted by: Terri Lewis | May 08, 2008 at 10:47 AM
There are two sides to this study that are interesting for me.
If it is true that my grandson is autistic because the gene line is contaminated by mentally ill parents or grandparents; the medical community should be advised to keep this under wraps.
If I, for example, were to retaliate against the pediatrician that injected my grandson with 5 diseases at one visit and do extreme damage. A very good defence is that the child is autistic and given that fact, I must be mentally unstable and I would get off.
It's in the genes.
Posted by: Fil Navarra | May 07, 2008 at 01:39 PM
Maybe there is some truth to this.....
I remember when I was a kid, and my mom was grabbing her purse and car keys, I would ask...
"Where you going mom?"
"CRAZY" she always answered. No joke. everytime.
(She still seems quite sane to me.....)
;oD Tim
Posted by: Tim Kasemodel | May 06, 2008 at 07:27 AM
I'm with Teresa. This is the CDC making parents crazy. If "everyone knows" autism parents are by and large crazy, then nobody need listen to what they have to say. They had to do something to make people forget about that nice Doctor Poling with all his research and education and experience and reasonableness and calm demeanor. So they decided to go with the one-two punch of shouting "WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE OF MEASLES" and "THOSE PARENTS ARE BUG CRAZY!"
Posted by: Garbo | May 06, 2008 at 02:14 AM
Well, I DO take alot of offense to this. BECAUSE to implicate I am crazy, means my child is too. I have to say, he is the best thing that has ever happened to me and my family. He has challenged me, made me grow up a bit, and quit expecting for myself to be the super mommy society expects us to be. This accusation is totally rediculous. The basis of this "study" is as well. I am not in any way crazy, and neither is my husband.... I think the craziest thing me and my husband have done is believe all these awful unwarrented studies, LOL!
Posted by: Evanne | May 05, 2008 at 07:17 PM
I can't imagine raising a child with autism causing depression or alcohol abuse.......DUH! I think I'll go have a glass of wine now :-)
Posted by: healingjack | May 05, 2008 at 07:09 PM
Is "Autism Lite" Trademarked?.... Hmmm.... I cannot wait for Autism Lite 2.0 to come out soon. I mean this is ridiculous!! Just another way to place the blame on the parent! Call me CRAZY but I am only in my early 30's and I did not see any classmates that had Autism.
Posted by: Elucidatus | May 05, 2008 at 06:01 PM
Let's not forget that the major cause of paranoia and "insanity" in all of us crazy "anti-vax" parents is the CDC.
So now they have something else to blame themselves for.
Posted by: Craig Willoughby | May 05, 2008 at 02:42 PM
Is that supposed to be a picture of Britney Spears accompanying this article? Just wondering.
Posted by: Andrea | May 05, 2008 at 02:27 PM
GrammaKnows and Gattogora - let's not forget Seasonal Affective Disorder playing into all this. Used to be Oregon was the #1 state for autism prevalence for Lack of Sunshine until Mercury in Minnesota won top honors for that position, give or take statistical errors in counting. Depressing enough for anyone I would think.
Posted by: What about SAD? | May 05, 2008 at 02:03 PM
It is obvious to me that the medical establishment and government entities are perpetuating the lies and misinformation to deny the autism epidemic.
With this latest round of studies being (strategically, in my opinion) released, the only thing that they are proving is that they are going to keep denying, projecting and deflecting.
It is clear. It will never be up to the government to change policy. It is up to us as parents to place a grass roots moratorium on vaccinating our children. We need to start refusing. We need to throw a massive rock onto the supply and demand wheel and hit them in their pocketbooks where it hurts, because our pain and outrage is not registering. Perhaps it will when they start "hurting" too.
If the government is not going to do the study on vaccinated vs. unvaccinated, let's help them out by doing a real-life version of it ourselves.
Change on this MUST happen from the ground up because it absolutely will not happen the other way around.
Posted by: Sakura | May 05, 2008 at 01:30 PM
For anyone interested inmy previous comments - Sweden is having an "epidemic" of celiac disease:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15925847
And they already know there's a problem with mercury fillings:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12676628
So much for "familial predisposition".
Posted by: GrammaKnows | May 05, 2008 at 01:24 PM
Too bad the study authors never asked those parents whether they had a mouthful of mercury tooth fillings.
A couple of years ago I had all my mercury tooth fillings replaced, at great expense. It's been a year since I've had a cold or flu (and no flu shot either, thank you very much).
As long as mercury remains a profitable medical treatment, it will not be seen for the brain-destroying poison it truly is.
Posted by: nhokkanen | May 05, 2008 at 01:22 PM
Hey! CDC! How about looking at "familial predisposition" of celiac and mercury poisoning from fish and dental amalgams as underlying pathology with mental health consequences???
Or would such actual medical evaluations irritate the heck out of those being funded by the manufacturers of Prozac, etc?
Posted by: GrammaKnows | May 05, 2008 at 01:18 PM
Do we all see the purpose of this study? It is not to find a treatment for autism or to study geographic prevalence. It is to take you back in time in the crazy Pediatrics Time Machine. Buckle your seat belts as you witness the ultimate middle finger up from the CDC pilot's seat..with AAP as the co-pilot. This is our punishment for messing with the sacred cow--VACCINES.
Someday there will be a chapter for this phase we are going through in the US History books, "Mercury Moms Gone Wild". This is a ploy to hurt and discredit us but it will never work. Boy, are they scared of us... and they should be.
Teresa
Posted by: Teresa Conrick | May 05, 2008 at 01:14 PM
If you really want to pull the rug out from under the CDC, try to get Congress to hold hearings on the role of HHV-6 in AIDS, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and autism. Once the public realizes that the CDC has ignored (through stupidity or worse) the role of this virus in a wide array of illnesses, the agency will have the diminished credibility it deserves.
The impression is that the vaccine issue is the one the CDC is afraid of. It's actually HHV-6 that should keep them awake at night.
Posted by: Lawrence | May 05, 2008 at 12:50 PM
Speaking of us being crazy...on Sunday I saw a report talking about difficulties in "deprogramming" the kids coming out of the polygamist cult. They listed about 6 "crazy" things they believed. For instance, you can't wear red- it is reserved for Jesus. Any guesses what number 6 was....no immunizations. So, we are crazy. Right up there with child-abusing cults.
Posted by: Jack | May 05, 2008 at 12:32 PM
Why is the CDC doing studies in Sweden anyway?
Posted by: AnneS | May 05, 2008 at 12:20 PM
I do not, would not, could not, will not, trust ANY study that comes out of the CDC on autism. The studies are designed and manipulated and changed and fudged and modified ad nauseum to give the results they want to portray. Yes, that much even my suggestion of a schizophrenic mind has learned. I am sorry you wasted your valuable time analyzing that trash. No, I do not like it, not one little bit.
Posted by: SAM I AM | May 05, 2008 at 11:37 AM
I've been waiting for this one, knowing it was coming and knowing that the flaws in the study would hinge on the cultural incompetence and, in some ways, outright racism of the researchers. I also knew it would piss me off royally. Deliberately mistaking what might be the understandable rates of distress in certain cultures for "genetic mental illness" is a well-worn method of shutting down justice movements in the past, so it doesn't surprise me that it's being revisited.
The hope of the CDC in going into this study was to kill a few birds with one stone: to "prove" the heritability of autism and to discredit activist parents of vaccine injured children by personifying them as crazy. And crazy people in movies are known to fabricate paranoid, delusional conspiracy theories, are commonly believed to be dangerous, to be in need of social controls for the safety of society. Look at what a perception like this might justify in terms of silencing the enviro movement.
There probably are generational precursers to the epidemic which show up as metal sensitivity, but too bad the study didn't set out looking for those things because they would have found a ton of "non-crazy" and "non-mental" symptoms such as allergies, reactions to metals and industrial poisons, autoimmune disorders, etc.
First off, a study focusing on depression among non-white immigrants to Sweden-- possibly the whitest country on earth even if it's reputed to be socially more liberal than some-- has to be performed to get a just comparison. How much does homesickness, alienation, loss of community and family play into this "depression"? I'm sure these studies have already been done along side studies of immigrants by region of origin to look into the effects of escaping poverty, political turmoil or atrocity, but why doesn't this study draw from those tables? And the fact that mostly non-white women in a white culture were being designated as "depressed" is interesting as well. How does isolation among immigrants especially impact women? How restrictive are the customs of their culture of origin and are these customs being carried out in their new country? Are they in conflict if they're no longer carrying on these restrictive customs? What is the rate of despair among women still living in their country of origin?
I fully believe in the toxic component of schizophrenia and I think it's no accident that autism was originally mistakenly dubbed "infantile schizophrenia". I've wondered if real schizophrenia could very well turn out to be something akin to late-onset autism, maybe with a different combination of insults but similar. But it's good to keep in mind that schizophrenia is also diagnosed only by behavior in mainstream institutions and that, unlike autism, there are many things which can be mistaken for it, such as severe PTSD.
And this is where it becomes a racial issue simply by investigating whose life is hardest in any first-world country: Why is it that black women are the most likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia in state institutions, followed only by black men, then other races and Native Americans and poor, white women? Why is poverty such a thread in who will eventually be diagnosed as schizophrenic only in developed countries but not so much in underdeveloped countries? Furthermore, the rate per 1000 of people diagnosed with schizophrenia or any mental disability one hundred years ago in the U.S. could not even hide the population per 1000 of children currently diagnosed with ASD from a few states, much less the entire country.
Posted by: Gatogorra | May 05, 2008 at 11:32 AM
The voices in my head have been telling me that this is just another example of the CDC pointing a spotlight on anything except the big, fat, pink elephant in the room. Of course, schizophrenia and paranoia go hand in hand...
Posted by: Jeanne | May 05, 2008 at 11:10 AM
It is an interesting paper as it tells us a few of things that we already knew, but had no data to support.
1. parents of autistic kids have "familial predisposition" and "Personality traits similar to, but not as severe as, the defining features of Autism". Basically this is just an observation that analytical people are having kids with autism. So people in the sciences and other very smart and logical folks are tending to have kids with autism, not a surprise.
2. Schizophrenia and autism are linked. Not a surprise at all either. The biological underpinnings of schizophrenia are always coming out, like links with immune response during pregnancy, caused by the flu http://www.schizophrenia.com/sznews/archives/005780.html. There are also reports linking it with cat feces and parasites http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/01/060125082853.htm.
Hmm... parasites and viruses.
3. Where the hell are the autistic adults? Oh, yeah, they have "Autism Lite" (TM) and work for Microsoft and the CDC. Maybe Grinker can find them.
bottom line: this is data that could be spun a couple of ways at least, but sure as hell doesn't agree with the CDC's talking points in some regards.
Posted by: doodle | May 05, 2008 at 10:47 AM
Shouldn't the headline to the study be: Parents who were injured by milder vaccine schedule are more likely to have a child severely injured by increased schedule?
Makes sense to me.
Posted by: Jack | May 05, 2008 at 10:21 AM