^ specialized ones like psychologists, psychiatrists, pediatricians etc
Are general doctors allowed to diagnose autism in Nigeria?

That's good that more people are aware than I thought.

Haba.Any qualified medical doctor can diagnose.The management is what involves specialists.

These are a few of the training videos used to help us understand the world of the child with autism.


What would you do if you were one of these individuals?



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M20DIK1Yt3A&autoplay=1


http://vimeo.com/m/52193530



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plPNhooUUuc



Researchers have discovered what could be causing this sensory overload.


I learned this in a training seminar. I do not have the source info.


As we grow our brains do something called pruning. Simply put our brains are continually making connections. When we are babies every time we learn something new our brains create a pathway for that particular skill or topic.


As we grow some of those skills are no longer necessary. Our brains prune the pathways we no longer need. It is sort of like cleaning and throwing out things we don't use or need any longer. It keeps the clutter down.


Our brains do the same thing. They prune our unnecessary pathways to make room for new and more current information and connections as needed.


Now imagine your brain doesn't prune (or clean out unnecessary connections) and just continues to make more and more pathways. Till your mind is cluttered with so much stuff that you can't make sense of it all. You are overwhelmed by all the stimulation.


Our mind is engineered to function a certain way. If our brain is not functioning properly it can cause problems that seem insurmountable.



New research sheds more light on how people with autism perceive the world around them.


I've talked about the pruning. Now imagine this as well...the words people say don't match up with what these individuals are hearing.


"The brains of children with autism are 'out of sync' when they look at the world around them, researchers have discover.


They believe the effect is rather like watching a badly dubbed film, as the children struggle to integrate simultaneous information from their eyes and their ears."


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/autism-study-finds-many-kids-have-audio-visual-gap-makes-speech-appear-out-of-sync/



Many individuals with autism do not make eye contact with others. Could this be why? Isn't their world confusing enough already? Now add this.



Children with Autism are usually delayed in learning to speak as well as learning social skills. Most children learn these things by watching and listening to their parents and playing with other children.

Can you see now why this task is much more difficult for children with autism?

There is hope for these children and their families. There are techniques that if implemented consistently with patience and love can help teach and enrich the lives of everyone involved.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_XEinSwThQ

I read an article recently about kids who were able to go past autism, kids who were cured.

The article suggests that a small but reliable subset of victims beat autism.

tbaba1234: I read an article recently about kids who were able to go past autism, kids who were cured.

This is very controversial and not really proven. The autism scale, or spectrum is wide. It goes from slightly affected to severely disabled. Some individuals learn to effectively "cope" with autism. I'm not sure outgrow or cure are words we can conclusively use at this point.

texanomaly:
This is very controversial and not really proven. The autism scale, or spectrum is wide. It goes from slightly affected to severely disabled. Some individuals learn to effectively "cope" with autism. I'm not sure outgrow or cure are words we can conclusively use at this point.

From the NYTIMES article:

In the last 18 months, however, two research groups have released rigorous, systematic studies, providing the best evidence yet that in fact a small but reliable subset of children really do overcome autism. The first, led by Deborah Fein, a clinical neuropsychologist who teaches at the University of Connecticut, looked at 34 young people, including B. She confirmed that all had early medical records solidly documenting autism and that they now no longer met autism’s criteria, a trajectory she called “optimal outcome.” She compared them with 44 young people who still had autism and were evaluated as “high functioning,” as well as 34 typically developing peers.

In May, another set of researchers published a study that tracked 85 children from their autism diagnosis (at age 2) for nearly two decades and found that about 9 percent of them no longer met the criteria for the disorder. The research, led by Catherine Lord, a renowned leader in the diagnosis and evaluation of autism who directs a large autism center and teaches at Weill Cornell Medical College, referred to those who were no longer autistic as “very positive outcome.”

Autism specialists hailed the reports. “Those of us who work closely with children with autism,” says Geraldine Dawson, a psychologist and researcher at Duke University’s department of psychiatry and the Institute for Brain Sciences, “have known clinically that there is this subgroup of kids who start out having autism and then, through the course of development, fully lose those symptoms — and yet people always questioned it. This work, in a very careful and systematic way, shows these kids exist.” She told me that she and many of her colleagues estimated that 10 percent or more of their autistic patients no longer had symptoms.

The findings come at a time when the number of autism cases nationwide appears to be climbing rapidly. No nationally representative study of autism’s prevalence exists, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s most recent study of 11 communities in the United States found that one in 68 children has autism, up from one in 88 two years earlier. Experts attribute much of that increase to greater awareness of the disease and its symptoms, as well as to broader diagnostic criteria. Some researchers say additional factors — among them toxic substances and older parental age —may contribute to the rise as well. Scientists suspect that what is called autism may actually be an array of distinct conditions that have different genetic and environmental etiologies but happen to produce similar symptoms. If true, it could help explain why some children progress so much while others don’t.

It sounds compelling and very interesting.

tbaba1234: It sounds compelling and very interesting.

I agree it does. Does the study say how severely these kids started out. Where did they fall on the spectrum to begin with. Not all kids with autism are severe cases. They can be taught. Some learn more slowly, but I have seen amazing results.

texanomaly:

I agree it does. Does the study say how severely these kids started out. Where did they fall on the spectrum to begin with. Not all kids with autism are severe cases. They can be taught. Some learn more slowly, but I have seen amazing results.

All I know about the study is from the report.

tbaba1234:

All I know about the study is from the report.

Well I hope it is true. These kids are extremely teachable. I have personally seen my students continue to make progress.


My heart will always be with these kids and I will never stop advocating for them. I have students that started with me in kinder and are now in high school. I love every child that comes through my classroom.

texanomaly:

Well I hope it is true. These kids are extremely teachable. I have personally seen my students continue to make progress.


My heart will always be with these kids and I will never stop advocating for them. I have students that started with me in kinder and are now in high school. I love every child that comes through my classroom.

Great job you're doing.Having worked with children with autism,i can imagine the patience you have to exercise.

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/03/27/study-autism-may-begin-developing-in-infants-during-pregnancy/

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Stunning developments were revealed Thursday about autism in America.

As CBS 2’s Dr. Max Gomez reported, autism is now thought to affect roughly 1.2 million children and teens in the United States – a huge increase.

But that includes all children on the autism spectrum, a very wide range of disease severity.

What has researchers excited is a new finding that brain changes in autism begin even before birth, Gomez reported.

New figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show 1 in 68 children have an autism spectrum disorder in the U.S.

That’s about a 30 percent increase from two years ago.

“We believe part of the increase in prevalence is due to better detection of autism. However, we still feel we are underestimating the prevalence of autism in the U.S.,” said Autism Speaks Associate Director Public Health Research Michael Rosanoff.

The report also highlights autism as almost five times more common among boys than girls.

While the disorder can be diagnosed as early as age 2, most children aren’t diagnosed until 4 years old.

Now, researchers have begun to find signs of autism in even younger children.

A study in the New England Journal of Medicine finds that changes in the brains of autistic children actually begin in the womb.

“We know there are places in the brain where they’re supposed to be and they are not. It’s like the pathways are not able to form in the proper way. We’ve been doing research at NYU that shows there’s problems in the connectivity of the brain, so that means that social centers, and language centers, and cognitive centers aren’t talking to each other in the way that they need to,” explained Dr. Melissa Nishawala, of NYU Child Study Center.

In normal fetuses, brain cells develop and migrate into specific layers. This study found that in the second trimester, some of the brain cells in autistic children did not go where they were supposed to, Gomez reported.

According to the CDC report, Alabama has the lowest prevalence of autism, while New Jersey has the highest.

However, the disparity could be due to different reporting methods as well as the fact that states like New Jersey provide more service for autism and affected families often move to those areas.