Merlin star Richard Wilson in call for autism workplace support

THE One Foot In The Grave actor wants people with the condition to be helped into employment after it was revealed only 15 per cent of those with autism are in full-time employment.

Richard Wilson delivered copies of the report to MSP Mark MacDonald

ACTOR Richard Wilson has called for people with autism to be given greater support to enter the world of work.

The star of Merlin and One Foot In The Grave made the demand as it was revealed that only around one in six people with the condition (15%) are in full-time employment.

Wilson is an ambassador for National Autistic Society (NAS) Scotland, which says large numbers of people on the autism spectrum have university degrees but are given only part-time or low-paid jobs.

Campaigners want to raise awareness among employers of the benefits people with autism can typically bring to a workplace, such as attention to detail and an ability to cope well with routine.

READ MORE >

Asperger's syndrome dropped from American Psychiatric Association manual

Asperger's syndrome will be dropped from the latest edition of the psychiatrist's "bible," the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM-5.

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) announced on Saturday the changes to its flagship manual that doctors use to diagnose patients with mental disorders. It's the first major rewriter to the DSM in nearly 20 years.

The familiar "Asperger's," along with some similar disorders, will be lumped together under autism spectrum disorder, "to help more accurately and consistently diagnose children with autism," the APA said in a statement. READ MORE >

Asheville teen with Asperger's a winning painter

Bailey Oxner, 14, finds painting helps calm the challenges of Asperger syndrome

Bailey Oxner concentrates while painting as her mother, Marisa, looks on at their home. Her work has won awards at the Mountain State Fair for the past several years. / John Fletcher/Jfletcher@citizen-times.com

Parenting a special-needs child is challenging, but in Bailey Sloan Oxner’s case, it’s made easier by the special talent she has for painting, her parents say.

Painting has not only brought this 14-year-old attention and awards, it has also served as a way of calming the anger and anxiety that go along with her autism.

“I don’t paint when I’m mad anymore,” Bailey said, sitting with her parents in their South Asheville home. “I’m afraid I’ll destroy the painting.” READ MORE >>

Autistic workers an ‘untapped pool’ of IT talent

Strong memory, passion for details and ability to think visually are some of the traits that make high-functioning autistic workers currently an untapped talent pool for the IT industry, industry watchers point out.

High-functioning autistic employees have traits such as strong memory and passion for details that work well in certain IT fields, reveal industry watchers, who say extra steps can ensure employment benefits for both organization and worker.

ZDNet Asia  |  By Kevin Kwang

Thorkil Sonne, founder of Danish computer company Specialisterne, hires only people with autism, specifically from the high-functioning end of the autistic spectrum. His experience with them has demonstrated that these special-needs people not only have a robust memory and attention for details, they take pride in what they do, have perseverance for repetitive tasks and are "very precise in their way of communication".

“High-functioning” autism typically refers to those that are able to live relatively independent lives compared to others who may demonstrate associated learning disabilities and need a lifetime of specialist support.

Rather than simply placing them in jobs that might not be a good fit, Specialisterne assesses every individual's skills, identifies what would make them feel wanted in the workplace and can help them excel, Sonne told ZDNet Asia in his e-mail.

"We try to find [specific] tasks in the business arena in which the [abovementioned] characteristics are important in order to do a great job," he explained. "We believe that up to 5 percent of all tasks could be solved successfully in a superior quality by our staff."

Specialisterne has been successful in solving tasks such as software testing, quality control, data entry and logistic services, he noted, adding that his team has proven that autistic workers can do better jobs than that of "other providers" the company's customers previously experienced.

Specialized education Anita Russell, autism consultant at Pathlight School, a Singapore-based autism-focused school with mainstream curriculum augmented by "life readiness skills", shed more light on the matter.

Is Autism an “Epidemic” or Are We Just Noticing More People Who Have It?

Emily Willingham (Twitter, Google+, blog) is a science writer and compulsive biologist whose work has appeared at Slate, Grist, Scientific American Guest Blog, and Double X Science, among others. She is science editor at the Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism and author of  The Complete Idiot’s Guide to College Biology.

Even though autism is now widely discussed in the media and society at large, the public and some experts alike are still stymied be a couple of the big, basic questions about the disorder: What is autism, and how do we identify—and count—it? A close look shows that the unknowns involved in both of these questions suffice to explain the reported autism boom. The disorder hasn’t actually become much more common—we’ve just developed better and more accurate ways of looking for it.

In March the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) the newly measured autism prevalences for 8-year-olds in the United States, and headlines roared about a “1 in 88 autism epidemic.” The fear-mongering has led some enterprising folk to latch onto our nation’s growing chemophobia and link the rise in autism to “toxins” or other alleged insults, and some to sell their research, books, and “cures.” On the other hand, some researchers say that what we’re really seeing is likely the upshot of more awareness about autism and ever-shifting diagnostic categories and criteria.

Leo Kanner first described autism almost 70 years ago, in 1944. Before that, autism didn’t exist as far as clinicians were concerned, and its official prevalence was, therefore, zero. There were, obviously, people with autism, but they were simply considered insane. Kanner himself noted in a 1965 paper that after he identified this entity, “almost overnight, the country seemed to be populated by a multitude of autistic children,” a trend that became noticeable in other countries, too, he said.

In 1951, Kanner wrote, the “great question” became whether or not to continue to roll autism into schizophrenia diagnoses, where it had been previously tucked away, or to consider it as a separate entity. But by 1953, one autism expert was warning about the “abuse of the diagnosis of autism” because it “threatens to become a fashion.” Sixty years later, plenty of people are still asserting that autism is just a popular diagnosis du jour (along with ADHD), that parents and doctors use to explain plain-old bad behavior.

Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism sometimes known as “little professor syndrome,” is in the same we-didn’t-see-it-before-and-now-we-do situation. In 1981, noted autism researcher Lorna Wing translated and revivified Hans Asperger’s 1944 paper describing this syndrome as separate from Kanner’s autistic disorder, although Wing herself argued that the two were part of a borderless continuum. Thus, prior to 1981, Asperger’s wasn’t a diagnosis, in spite of having been identified almost 40 years earlier. Again, the official prevalence was zero before its adoption by the medical community.

And so, here we are today, with two diagnoses that didn’t exist 70 years ago (plus a third, even newer one:PDD-NOS) even though the people with the conditions did. The CDC’s new data say that in the United States, 1 in 88 eight-year-olds fits the criteria for one of these three, up from 1 in 110 for its 2006 estimate. Is that change the result of an increase in some dastardly environmental “toxin,” as some argue? Or is it because of diagnostic changes and reassignments, as happened when autism left the schizophrenia umbrella?

To most experts in autism and autism epidemiology, the biggest factors accounting for the boost in autism prevalence are the shifting definitions and increased awareness about the disorder. Several decades after the introduction of autism as a diagnosis, researchers have reported that professionals are still engaging in “diagnostic substitution”: moving people from one diagnostic category, such as “mental retardation” or “language impairment,” to the autism category. For instance, in one recent study, researchers at UCLA re-examined a population of 489 children who’d been living in Utah in the 1980s. Their first results, reported in 1990, identified 108 kids in the study population who received a classification of “challenged” (what we consider today to be “intellectually disabled”) but who were not diagnosed as autistic. When the investigators went back and applied today’s autism diagnostic criteria to the same 108 children, they found that 64 of them would have received an autism diagnosis today, along with their diagnosis of intellectual disability.

Further evidence of this shift comes from developmental neuropsychologist Dorothy Bishop and colleagues, who completed a study involving re-evaluation of adults who’d been identified in childhood as having a developmental language disorder rather than autism. Using two diagnostic tools to evaluate them today, Bishops’ group found that a fifth of these adults met the criteria for an autism spectrum diagnosis when they previously had not been recognized as autistic.

Another strong argument against the specter of an emergent autism epidemic is that prevalence of the disorder is notably similar from country to country and between generations. A 2011 UK study of a large adult population found a consistent prevalence of 1% among adults, “similar to that found in (UK) children” and about where the rates are now among US children. In other words, they found as many adults as there were children walking around with autism, suggesting stable rates across generations—at least, when people bother to look at adults. And back in 1996, Lorna Wing (the autism expert who’d translated Asperger’s seminal paper) tentatively estimated an autism spectrum disorder prevalence of 0.91% [PDF] based on studies of children born between 1956 and 1983, close to the 1% that keeps... READ MORE >>

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

'All my life I've known that I was different'

Laurence Mitchell was bullied at school and struggled in relationships. So when he learnt he had Asperger's at 47, it was a relief

Laurence Mitchell was aware that there was something different about him from his early days at school. His fellow pupils would bully him because of his awkwardness in communication. Even his teachers would single him out in front of the class when he failed to perform. "I was picked on by the bullies," he says. "They would get into my pockets every week to see what they could take. That was at the age of 11. My parents didn't know what was wrong with me."

It all became clear when the 58-year-old reached the age of 47 and visited the Priory clinic. He felt he needed a psychiatric assessment because of his obsessive personality. There, he was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome – an autism spectrum disorder.

In some ways he felt a sense of relief, but he believes there are many other people out there – perhaps older than him – who are still not diagnosed but suffering from... READ MORE >>

Schoolyard Designed For Children With Autism

A Kansas State University graduate student is creating a schoolyard that can become a therapeutic landscape for children with autism. 

Chelsey King, master's student in landscape architecture, St. Peters, Mo., is working with Katie Kingery-Page, assistant professor of landscape architecture, to envision a place where elementary school children with autism could feel comfortable and included.

"My main goal was to provide different opportunities for children with autism to be able to interact in their environment without being segregated from the rest of the school," King said. "I didn't want that separation to occur."

The schoolyard can be an inviting place for children with autism, King said, if it provides several aspects: clear boundaries, a variety of activities and activity level spaces, places where the child can go when overstimulated, opportunities for a variety of sensory input without being overwhelming and a variety of ways to foster communication between peers.

"The biggest issue with traditional schoolyards is that they are completely open but also busy and crowded in specific areas," King said. "This can be too overstimulating for a person with autism."

King researched ways that she could create an environment where children with autism would be able to interact with their surroundings and their peers, but where they could also get away from overstimulation until they felt more comfortable and could re-enter the activities.

"Through this research, I was able to determine that therapies and activities geared toward sensory stimulation, cognitive development, communication skills, and fine and gross motor skills -- which traditionally occur in... READ MORE >>

Autism in the News

The latest Autism News articles, includes news on ASD, Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD), and Asperger's Syndrome. Information is also provided about social interaction problems, lack of communication skills and emotional interpretation difficulties - causes and how to overcome them.

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Latest News

Potential Diagnostic Test For Autism Suggested By Computer Analysis Of EEG Patterns

27 June 2012

Widely available EEG testing can distinguish children with autism from neurotypical children as early as age 2, finds a study from Boston Children's Hospital. The study is the largest, most rigorous study to date to... [read article]

New EEG Test To Diagnose Children With Autism

26 June 2012

BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Medicine carries an article this week with new research showing the possibility of identifying children with autism using an EEG test. EEG, or Electroencephalography, records... [read article]

EEG Test To Identify Autism In Children

26 June 2012

The number of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has recently increased to one in 100. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Medicine demonstrates that EEG can distinguish... [read article]

Archive

Hormonal Response Is Stronger In People With Williams Syndrome, Shedding Light On The Biological Underpinnings Of Social Disorders

BBC - My Autism and Me

LICENCE - all rights reserved by BBC, CBBC Programmes, Newsround

In this Newsround Special, 13-year-old Rosie takes viewers into her world to explain what it's like to grow up with autism - a condition which affects how children see life, and the way they relate to others around them.

★ Watch her in action & SHARE to inspire others! ★

So true... "SHARE" if you ❤ spreading autism awareness!

So true... "SHARE" if you ❤ spreading autism awareness! 

Difficult teens with autism, and guest psychologist's observations

Michelle Garcia Winner

The following are some thoughtful words from a psychologist to a Social Thinking clinician regarding two teen clients who are struggling to benefit from treatment. The psychologist would like to stay under the radar, so he has chosen to go by the moniker, Dr. Panglos.

Albert and Steven live in different cities in an urban metropolis somewhere west of Asia; they are high school age and they don’t know each other.

From Dr. Panglos to a clinician he is working with:
Okay, here is what I think. Symptoms are multiply determined and although Albert and Steven both have profound social deficits that, on the surface, make them appear to meet the criteria for being "on the spectrum" I no longer feel that A.S. describes the true nature of their deficits. That said, they are very much alike in how they do present so if it is not Asperger's than what is it, and what do you do about it? First, what is it?

Video: Stephen discusses his Asperger's

Stephen
Stephen from London, talks about his Asperger's and some of the problems he's had in his life because of his autism, and how he has overcome some of his obstacles through his music.

Source of Autism Support Network

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