Autism - Signs, Symptoms, Treatments, Resources, Support for Autism

There are many symptoms that an individual with autism may experience; however, one of the most frustrating and hard to understand is what has recently been named Theory of Mind. Within the last few decades, this problem has been more thoroughly discussed and studied, but it is still largely a mystery. Because of Theory of Mind problems, social interactions are even more strenuous for autistic individuals. Theory of Mind causes these social behavior difficulties in almost every aspect, from playgroups as children to the social world as adults. The concept behind Theory of Mind is that autistic people fail to recognize that other people in the world have different ways of looking at things. Although an autistic person may not be egocentric, he or she probably inherently assumes that everyone thinks, feels, and knows the same things he or she thinks, feels, and knows. Most autistic people have an inability to lie, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but is clearly unnatural. They don...

Autism effects every child differently, so it is difficult to find the exact treatments your child needs to cope with his or her symptoms. One thing that effects some autistic children (though, not all) is problems with visual perception. By using some standardized methods to help improve visual perception, you can give your child the ability to see the world more clearly, making learning and comprehension easier and possibly curbing some behavior problems as well. Autistic children mainly have problems with sensory overload and distortion. These are some of the same problems many people not suffering from the disorder develop, and so many treatment options have become available. Individuals with autism often find, however, that the sensory overload of the world due to light, colors, contrast, shapes, and patterns, is too much to handle, causing them to act out or shut down in general. This is sometimes a genetic condition that is simply enhanced by the autism, so if the child’s paren...

Brain - copyright Wellcome Trust Brain cell communication may be unbalanced Regions of the brain may not communicate with each other as efficiently as they should in people with autism, research suggests. US scientists used sophisticated scans to examine connections in the cerebral cortex - the part of the brain that deals with complex thought. They found evidence of abnormal patterns of brain cell connection in people with autism. The research was presented at a meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. In some parts of the cortex brain cells made too many connections, and in other parts not enough. Lead researcher Dr Michael Murias, from the University of Washington, said: "Our findings indicate adults with autism show differences in coordinated neural activity, which implies poor internal communication between the parts of the brain." The researchers analyzed electroencephalography (EEG) scans from 36 adults, half of who had autism. The EEGs, which measure the activity of h...

Source: Yahoo News WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has announced a $5.9 million study in six states to try to find the causes of autism. The study, the next of the agency's promised initiatives to look more closely at the disorder, would look for factors that may put children at risk for autism spectrum disorders and other developmental disabilities, the CDC said. It said 2,700 children aged 2 to 5 and their parents would take part in the five-year study. Researchers will look for infections or abnormal responses to infections in the child or parents, genetic factors, the mother's reproductive history, hormone levels, potential gastrointestinal problems in the child and other factors. "We hope this national study will help us learn more about the characteristics of children with ASDs, factors associated with developmental delays, and how genes and the environment may affect child development," said Dr. Jose Cordero, directo...

Source: Yahoo News By Lisa Richwine WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A schizophrenia drug from Johnson & Johnson won U.S. approval as the first medicine to treat symptoms of autism in children and adolescents, the Food and Drug Administration said on Friday. The FDA said Risperdal could be used to treat irritability, including aggression, deliberate self-injury and temper tantrums. Autism is a term used to describe a broad range of symptoms, from repetitive behaviors to trouble with language and sometimes mental retardation. Risperdal is already Johnson & Johnson's biggest-selling product, with 2005 global sales of about $3.5 billion. The FDA said it based the new approval on two eight-week studies in 156 autistic patients ages 5 to 16 who took Risperdal or a placebo. Ninety-percent of them were between the ages of 5 to 12. Patients treated with Risperdal had improved scores on two scales measuring behavioral symptoms, the FDA said. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention es...

Source: NIH News Well Siblings Share Some of the Same Behavioral, Neural Features The brain’s fear hub likely becomes abnormally small in the most severely socially impaired males with autism spectrum disorders (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/healthinformation/autismmenu.cfm), researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and National Institute on Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) have discovered. Teens and young men who were slowest at distinguishing emotional from neutral expressions and gazed at eyes least — indicators of social impairment — had a smaller than normal amygdala, an almond-shaped danger-detector deep in the brain. The researchers also linked such amygdala shrinkage to impaired nonverbal social behavior in early childhood. The new findings suggest that social fear in autism may initially trigger a hyperactive, abnormally enlarged amygdala, which eventually gives way to a toxic adaptation that kills amygdala...

Source: BBC News Increased rainfall, or something linked to it, may be connected to the development of autism, scientists say. The theory is based on child health and weather records from three US states, but has been given an icy reception by UK experts. The US study found autism rates were higher among children whose states experienced higher rainfall in their first three years. The work appears in Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. The rising rate of autism - up, by some measures, from one in 2,500 to one in 150 - has been attributed mainly to improvements in the way doctors are able to recognise the disorder. However, scientists from Cornell University say this does not exclude a factor which may be independently increasing the number of children growing up with the condition. They calculated average annual rainfall for California, Oregon and Washington State between 1987 and 1999, then looked at autism prevalence rates in the children growing up during this period. ...

Source: WTKR By Alan Mozes MONDAY, Dec. 1 (Health Day News) -- Parents of autistic children are more likely to see their sons or daughter's special health needs go unmet, a new government report shows. Data from the National Survey of Children With Special Health Care Needs also indicated that when compared with families that have kids with other special emotional or physical needs, parents caring for autistic children face a significantly greater financial burden -- given that many must cut back their work schedule or quit their jobs altogether to care for their autistic child. "Families of kids with autism were impacted much more strongly by the condition than the other groups, across all indicators," said study author Michael D. Kogan, director of the office of data and program development with the Maternal and Child Health Bureau at the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration, based in Rockville, Md. Kogan and his colleagues publish the findings in the Dec...

Source: Science Daily ScienceDaily (Apr. 2, 2009) — Scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have proposed a sweeping new theory of autism that suggests that the brains of people with autism are structurally normal but dysregulated, meaning symptoms of the disorder might be reversible. The central tenet of the theory, published in the March issue of Brain Research Reviews, is that autism is a developmental disorder caused by impaired regulation of the locus coeruleus, a bundle of neurons in the brain stem that processes sensory signals from all areas of the body. The new theory stems from decades of anecdotal observations that some autistic children seem to improve when they have a fever, only to regress when the fever ebbs. A 2007 study in the journal Pediatrics took a more rigorous look at fever and autism, observing autistic children during and after fever episodes and comparing their behavior with autistic children who didn't have fevers. This s...

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a range of complex neurodevelopment disorders, characterized by social impairments, communication difficulties, and restricted, repetitive, and stereotyped patterns of behavior. Autistic disorder, sometimes called autism or classical ASD, is the most severe form of ASD, while other conditions along the spectrum include a milder form known as Asperger syndrome, the rare condition called Rett syndrome, and childhood disintegrative disorder and pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified (usually referred to as PDD-NOS). Although ASD varies significantly in character and severity, it occurs in all ethnic and socioeconomic groups and affects every age group. ASD varies widely in severity and symptoms and may go unrecognized, especially in mildly affected children or when it is masked by more debilitating handicaps. Very early indicators that require evaluation by an expert include: no babbling or pointing by age 1 no single words by 16 months ...

Autism is the common term for a range of disabilities medically classified as Pervasive Developmental Disorders (PDD). Autism/PDD is characterized by qualitative differences in the development of cognitive, language, social or motor skills, and these are usually apparent before age three. Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) cover a wide range of behaviors and abilities. People who have ASDs, like all people, differ greatly in the way they act and what they can do. No two people with Autism will have the same symptoms. A symptom might be mild in one person and severe in another person. Some examples of the types of problems and behaviors a child or adult with an ASD might have follow. Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterised by abnormal social interaction, communication ability, interest patterns, and behavior patterns. Autism is found to occur due to the vulnerability to environmental triggers displayed by the human genes. Seven major genes have been identified to be related ...

If you want to know what an autistic child looks like, look at your own child or grandchild. Look at the children who live next door to you and take a glimpse at every child you walk past on the street. These could very well be the faces of autism. There is no visible indication that a child is affected by this disturbing neurological disorder. Autism is the king of all tricksters. I know this to be true because whenever my husband and I take our son to the store or doctor’s office, the looks of disgust we receive in response to his unruly behavior never let up. Unless we inform someone, and we always have to, no one has a clue that he is autistic. When our ten requests for Darius to “settle down” won’t get through to him, when he is climbing on chairs or is having a screaming fit, people continue to stare through us with questions of, “Why won’t they do something about him?” or “If that were my child I’d really handle him.” From time to time, I find myself getting upset about the glar...

Do you know autism affects male children four times more than female children? The characteristic feature of autism in children includes non-verbal and impaired verbal communication. In addition to this the autism in children creates imaginative social interaction and activity. Infantile autism in children develops at about 30 months of age. Autism in children is a condition in which they find it difficult to build normal relationships with others. This can easily be diagnosed by disturbances normal characteristic behaviors. It has been found that autism in children is occurring at a rate of 4 in 10,000 children. Moreover, autism in children is considered a lifelong disease. The occurrence of the disease ranges from mild to severe. In mild form, the child with autism can live independently, whereas in severe form the autism requires medical supervision and support throughout his/her life. The risk factors and causes of autism include viral infection. Viral infection, mainly rubella vir...

Autism is a brain disorder that begins in early childhood, usually within the first three years of life and persists throughout adulthood. It affects crucial areas of development and exhibits following symptoms like: ·learning difficulties i.e. he lacks in ability to learn inductively from surrounding events, ·communication or speech problems, ·difficulty relating to people, marked by a lack of awareness of the feelings of others, indifferent to parents ·lack of social interaction, ·short attention span, ·not exhibiting creative or imaginative play, ·performing actions that are often repetitive and unchanging like twirling objects or rocking, ·reacting extremely to changes in the immediate environment. Autistic children appear to lack the ability to see things from another person's perspective, a behavior cited as exclusive to human beings above the age of five and possibly in some primates. Autistic traits continue into adulthood, but vary in severity. Some adults with autism do w...

It’s not the childs fault; Believe it or not, poor parenting is the main cause of bad behaviour in children. Kids can be frustrating, annoying and down right infuriating at times and yet you’re still expected to love and care for the little ‘angels’ through thick and thin. They won’t admit it as often parents don’t know any different, but often the problem is due to poor parenting which manifests itself in bad behaviour in the child. This in turn has a negative affect on the home and work life of everyone in the household as strife and conflict dominates the family. Anne Sprigpitt, owner of Parenting-tips.info says, "Most parents don’t realise it, but their actions have a direct influence on the behaviour of their child whether they are a toddler or a teen. Almost everything a child learns in the first few years of its life is from their parents and it is all stored in the child’s memory for a later date." "The biggest problems are due to a lack of discipline, boundaries...

No matter who we are, or what we do in life, most of us have kids. And there are numerous theories floating around regarding parenting. The two I have found that are crucial above all else: teaching my kids that everything but love, shelter, clothes, schooling and food are privileges, not rights, and more importantly is to be consistent with them. It is imperative that you are consistent with EVERYTHING starting when the child is very small. Sounds easy, but it's very hard to do. We all get caught up in our lives, get frustrated or angry and threaten things we don't mean, are too tired to deal with keeping our word, or don't have the strength for the temper tantrums and begging. Most parents at some stage are driven to distraction by one or more of their children’s annoying habits or behaviours, whether it is a toddler who continually whines, a school-aged child who leaves clothes lying around or a teenager who uses a less than pleasant vocabulary. How to affect change is ...

Can you recall when you were a child doing something that caused your mother or father upset? Considering the transgression was not too offensive, most likely, you received a lengthy discourse as to why it was quite irresponsible of you to take the actions which were taken. To the same point, do you remember any of those lengthy, passionate lectures given to you by your parents? Most likely the answer is a resounding, “No!” Research into brain activity as it relates to stress informs us that in times of high stress, our thinking processes become confused and distorted, and our short-term memory is suppressed. With this being the case, allow me to make a point which may save both you and your child many periods of frustration. First, children act out when they are stressed out. It’s very simple, when your child does something that you are certain he knows better than doing, his actions are stemming from stress. He is experiencing more stress within his brain and body system than he can ...

Every parent wants the best for his or her kid, wishing only the best, good health, bright future and prosperous life to the child. But one morning it just hit you, your child is turning 3 years old next month but still remains unresponsive to you. Your child is not as interactive as other kids would usually be. 'Could my child be autistic?' Any parent would be alarmed. Autism may sound familiar to you. It is however important to first establish that this is not an infection or a contagious disease. This is actually a condition where the brain of the child has developed differently, resulting to certain ramifications that affected the system of the child and manifesting in the lack of interpersonal skills of the child. This condition occurs to 1 child in every 700 in the population. It was found also that this is most likely to occur among the boys. The signs manifest at an early stage in a child's life. It is necessary that you be cautious of your child's behavior and ...

As a parent with an autistic child, you want to do everything you can to protect your child. We don’t want to place our children in circumstances that scare them, however, setting your child up in a program or providing them with social activities can help them to learn how to manage their social anxieties. First of all, when your child is diagnosed with autism, research the symptoms that are associated with this developmental disorder. The more information you have, the better you will be qualified to deal with certain situations. It will also help to join a support group for parents with autistic children. You’ll find other parents will be willing to share their sources of information with you. When you find a program for your child, you’ll want to make sure it is appropriately qualified to deal with your child’s social anxiety. Every autistic child is different so you’ll want to make sure you are honest and up-front about the symptoms your child displays. It’s also important to reme...