JOHN'S WORLD OF AUTISM

The Mystery of Autism

By Mary Anne Winslow

The mental disability of autism is one of the most misunderstood in our social world. There are different degrees of autism. Some cases are so severe that the child cannot function on his own, others are so unnoticeable that the person lives and functions as a normal person with the aid of medication. The purpose of this paper is to explain the mystery of autism.

According to textbooks “Autism” is a life long, often devastating disorder that profoundly affects almost every aspect of an individuals functioning. Those who have Autism are seen as displaying fixed patterns of routine behavior by grouping things together, they may also have poor social interaction and communication skills. Along the side of autism is Aspergers Syndrome, there is no direct difference from aspergers and autism, Aspergers is seen to be the milder of the two conditions. Because autism is not a physical disablement it makes the disorder harder to create an understanding of the condition and therefore create awareness, yet it affects over 500,000 families within the UK. According to the National Autistic Society, Aspergers Syndrome is a condition that affects the way a person communicates and relates to others. Those with Autism also tend to have other learning difficulties, but most tend share a problem of making sense of the world that they live in, they tend to take things literally and at face value, and have to be told and explained constantly about what things are and what they mean. There are three main areas that children with autism are affected by:

Social interaction: have problems with strangers and gaining eye contact with these people.

Social Communication: they have problems in understanding peoples facial expressions when explaining things, and the tone of voice used in explanations. They also have problems with non-verbal and verbal communication in that they have difficulty in distinguishing between the meanings behind them and gestures which maybe used in non-verbal communication.

Imagination: have problems in imagining the ideas that are made to them and making things for themselves, and the imaginative ideas that they do have is often used repeatedly over and over again, this usually constitutes to three for which they are prone to do.

There are no direct causes for autism but it has been found that genetic factors play a part in abnormalities in brain development, which may occur during pregnancy, birth or shortly after. The earlier a child is diagnosed as having autism the better as they can get the help and the support that they need. According to one researcher the earlier a child is diagnosed and there is some kind of intervention as it can help the child and the family, and also help any services which the child is in contact or may come into contact with. Researchers also say that early intervention also proves to have a better outcome on the Childs life. Most children are diagnosed by the age of two or three. As there is no direct cure for the disorder there are many different types of intervention. No one approach is found to help children, as there are varying different approaches, some are totally rigid and some are reasonably flexible. Which approach is used can be seen as how the child is diagnosed this can have major affects on the child and the family setting in which they live. The professional giving the diagnosis has to be careful as a wrong diagnosis can have detrimental affects on all those concerned. The professional will collect together an understanding from the child and the family in which they live to before a child is “labeled”. Once a child has been diagnosed treatments may be given, pharmacological methods such as steroids have been in used in treating certain aspects of autism. Some say that it can successfully remove the autistic behaviors that a child may have and can also remove any language defects which they may have.

There is a physiological difference to those who have Autism, certain proteins in the body are prone to make children more susceptible to acquiring autism than others and different proteins have different effects on the mind and therefore have different outcomes. Whilst there is a physiological difference there is also a physical difference, there are a higher number of boys with autistic spectrum disorders than girls, a 4:1 ratio has been found in various studies, One researcher found there were fifteen times more boys with autism, when she looked closely she found that of the children with learning difficulties there was a more equal ratio of 2:1, so when girls get an autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) tends to be more severe. This may be because girls tend to have better verbal skills and boys are better at visual-spatial tasks.

to be expected to learn more than one thing at a time, for example they find it hard to read and write, so if a child is dictated to they would find it hard to write down what they hard heard. If it is a new skill is best that the child is taught the skill on a one-to-one basis as they will gain a better understanding rather than being taught in group and failing to grasp the ideas behind the skill and the rest of the group move on to another task, this may cause bizarre behaviors. These behaviors to those without autism may see them as a problem with pupil and they may be taken out of the classroom, this may cause further problems because they maybe moved to an unfamiliar setting. These bizarre behaviors might be the child making an understanding of the world that they live.

About The Author

Mary Anne Winslow is a member of Essay Writing Service counselling department team and a dissertation writing consultant. Contact her to get free counselling on custom essay writing.

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