Dachel Media Update: Community Shuns Boy with Autism?
By Anne Dachel
The Dachel Media Update is sponsored by Lee Silsby Compounding Pharmacy and OurKidsASD, an online supplement retailer for patients with special needs.
Since, according to out-of-date statistics from the CDC, one in every 68 U.S. children has an autism diagnosis, it's bound to be a topic in the media. Every hour new stories appear on Google News. I can only sort out a few on any given day. Here are some recent ones. Incredibly, the mysterious disorder that can change a normally developing child into a sick, non-verbal, low-functioning one overnight is never a crisis. Almost everything out there is to condition us to accept autism as just something that happens to kids for some unknown reason. We're being told in lots of places that it's nothing new, it's always been a part of the human race, we just never recognized or accepted it till now.
Here's what I found. Parents have to provide a future for their ASD children because, incredibly, since the beginning of the United States, we've neglected this significant disabled population. (BTW, we're not supposed to call autism a disability. It's insulting to people on the spectrum. It's our duty to accept and accommodate this condition.) Another story also focuses on the lack of a future for a boy with low functioning autism.
Before leaving NIMH, Insel has formed a "partnership" with Canada in autism research. From the press release, it's clear that it's designed to look busy and come up with nothing. We're told 3 million Americans have autism (which comes from applying the rate across the population, something no one has been able to do). The announcement also never mentions the current autism rate and the words "child" and "children" don't appear even once in the article. Only "individuals" and "people" are on the autism spectrum. There are "genetic risk and [unnamed] environmental stressors" related to autism, but "no single cause."
ASA (San Francisco) reports on a shocking law suit filed against parents of an autistic child. The suit hasn't been dropped even though the family left the neighborhood. Clearly some people don't plan on joining in with blue lights come April. More evidence that autism is not a normal and acceptable part of being a kid.
People Magazine tells us about "an All-Autism Wedding." Wow. The bride is 54 and she didn't find out she was autistic until she was 50. More proof that autism affects all age groups and we need to recognize it.
Finally CBS reports on doctors who misdiagnosis autism as ADHD. One neurological disorder overwhelming our children is mistaken for another one. So maybe doctors aren't doing all that "better diagnosing" after all. Maybe, if officials ever find time to update the autism rate, we'll find EVEN MORE CHILDREN HAVE AUTISM.
Sept 16, 2015, Autism Daily Newscast: Housing project for adults with autism to be built in Dennis, Mass.
Sept 16, 2015, Canadian Newswire: New Canada-U.S. Partnership Paves the Way for International Collaborations in Autism Research
Sept 15, 2015, Autism Society of America (San Francisco): Neighbor Lawsuit Seeks to Declare Autistic Boy a “Public Nuisance”
Sept 15, 2015, LinkedIn.com: “Low-Functioning” Autism and Employment
Sept 15, 2015, The Suffield Times (CA): Google poaches prime U.S. neuroscientist to steer psychological well being undertaking
Sept 15, 2015, PEOPLE Magazine: Meet the First Couple to Have an All-Autism Wedding: 'Autistic Children Can Grow Up and Have a Happy Life,' Says the Bride
Sept 14, 2015, CBS News: ADHD symptoms may mask autism in young kids
A housing project championed by the Friends or Relatives with Autism and Related Disorders (FORWARD) is one step closer to becoming a reality as the selectmen of Dennis County approved a 99-year lease of a 4.9 acres of land located in Hokum Rock Road.
The $1.5 million-project will be home to eight adults with autism. The organization aims to secure their future through the construction of two phases of duplex homes that include facilities specialized to help individuals on the autism spectrum.
. . . According to Ohman, once they age out of it, students become displaced after years and years of training under their special needs program— and many of them have little to no understanding of what is happening, and have no idea what to do next.
Canada's Ontario Brain Institute (OBI) and the U.S.' National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) are linking up their big data initiatives to promote sharing and drive autism spectrum disorder (ASD) research forward.
ASD affects over 3 million individuals in the U.S. and tens of millions worldwide. Beginning early in childhood, ASD affects an individual's ability to think, learn, interact socially, and live independently. Researchers know that there is no single cause of ASD but rather a combination of factors including genetic risk and environmental stressors may come into play. The heterogeneity in the way the disorder presents itself makes it difficult to treat and complicated to study. For these reasons, today's ASD researchers come from a wide-range of science and medical backgrounds and they are interested in looking at broad collections of data ranging from brain imaging to behavioural assessments.
Autism Society of America (San Francisco):
Hearing on discovery motions set for September 22, 2015 9 am, San Jose
Dear Bay Area autism families,
We wanted to let you know about an extraordinary, unprecedented lawsuit against a local family that could have profound implications for all of us affected by autism.
In June 2014, two Sunnyvale couples, whose homes on Arlington Court flanked a home occupied by a nine year-old autistic boy and his parents, sued the autism family in Santa Clara County Superior Court, alleging a smattering of incidents that had occurred sporadically over the span of about six years. The incidents sound much like those that happen with many autistic children, and include, for example, that the boy had entered a neighbor's garage, had taken a neighbor’s banana, had sought out neighbors' sweets, had kicked a car (no damage), had tossed some objects over a fence, had pulled a child’s hair and had on occasion kicked at people (no injuries), and had tossed a bicycle helmet. The boy was between 3 and 9 years of age, and weighed less than 60 pounds, at the time of these alleged actions. . . .
After visiting Silicon Valley this summer time for a tour of tech corporations together with Apple, Google and IBM, the director of the Nationwide Institute of Psychological Well being is coming again — this time to work right here.
Google’s life sciences division, now its personal subsidiary of father or mother firm Alphabet, stated Tuesday that it has employed Thomas Insel, a neuroscientist and psychiatrist who since 2002 has run the department of the Maryland-based Nationwide Institutes of Well being that works on understanding and treating psychological issues.
Insel is “recognized for his analysis into the neurobiology of social behaviors,” and was a pioneer in learning the position of oxytocin and vasopressin in social bonding, in line with Collins. Insel’s expertise consists of directing the Yerkes Regional Primate Analysis Middle in Atlanta within the 1990s, and operating neuroscience and autism analysis facilities at Emory College. He labored for the nation’s psychological well being analysis institute from 1980 to 1994 earlier than returning to steer it in 2002.
"Open access to data from many people and many studies is paramount in ASD research because of the tremendous range of symptom type and severity among those affected," says Dr. Thomas Insel, Director of the National Institute of Mental Health. "This new link between repositories will further leverage the resources of both NDAR and OBI and enlarge the already rich well of data from which researchers can draw to address autism and other disorders."
"Autism Speaks is partners with both Ontario Brain Institute and NIMH and applauds this collaborative initiative to increase supports for the ASD research community. We value the significance of cross-border partnerships as vital to accelerating advancements in ASD knowledge."
If you're the parent of a teenager with autism you may have already begun to think about what adulthood will bring for your child with respect to viable living options, access to necessary services and social opportunities. If you are the parent of a “high-functioning” teen, you may allow yourself to picture a future in which your adult child is employed. Maybe you have read some of the recent well-publicized stories of major corporations benefitting from the loyalty, attention to detail and punctuality exhibited by many employees with Asperger’s Syndrome. If, like me, you are the parent of a “low-functioning” non-verbal, stimming adolescent, you are not often encouraged to consider a future of meaningful and satisfying employment for your child.
On Saturday, September 26, Lesko and Nelson are getting married, and the wedding itself will be "epic" too – they'll be celebrating the first all-autism wedding.
The bride and groom, who are both on the autistic spectrum, will be joined by an entire wedding party (ring bearer, harpist, wedding cake baker, groomsman, usher and more) that identify as autistic.
Symptoms attributed to attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may overshadow or mask autism spectrum disorder in very young children, a new study reveals.
This can create a significant delay in the diagnosis of autism. It took an average of three years longer to diagnose autism in children initially thought to have just ADHD, the researchers said.
. . . Symptoms attributed to attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may overshadow or mask autism spectrum disorder in very young children, a new study reveals.
This can create a significant delay in the diagnosis of autism. It took an average of three years longer to diagnose autism in children initially thought to have just ADHD, the researchers said.
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My neighbors were not happy with my autistic son because he wandered into their yard and at times could be a bit of a nuisance. About 8 years later, their granddaughter was diagnosed with autism. On the death of her mother, they became her caretakers. (The dad has never been in the child's life.) She likes to go into the neighborhood houses uninvited and she's often in my backyard. Karma can be a bitch, something that many people filing lawsuits should keep in mind.
Posted by: Margaret | September 17, 2015 at 09:24 AM
OH MY GOSH!!!!!
DONALD TRUMP!!!!!
Posted by: Shannon Epstein | September 16, 2015 at 11:23 PM