Autism treatments:
Hope and the promise of recovery
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It was not very long ago that the experts insisted that autism was a life long, untreatable condition. Some professionals still tell parents point blank to accept that they would eventually have to place their child in an institution.
Then the US-based Autism Research Institute started to use phrases like “Autism is Treatable” and “Recovered Kids”. Conservative medical experts viewed such phrases as sacrilegious.
To them, there is simply no such thing! Once autistic, always autistic. No cure. Accept it!
Professionals making claims of treatment and recovery are accused of giving false hope, or worse, fraud.
Recovery” from autism treatments
Dr. Cecilia McCarton, a developmental paediatrician, now states that recovery is a new concept in autism and that 5 to 10 percent of children do recover completely. (ST Mind Your Body 8 March 2006).
We have therefore progressed from “no such thing possible” to “5 to 10 percent recovery rate”. This is something to shout about! It gives hope.
Autism treatments and hope
How important is this hope? As a parent of an autistic teenager, this hope was crucial.
Without hope, I would not have mortgaged my house for those special therapies or to buy special nutritional supplements and gluten-free cookies. Without hope, my wife would not have quit her job for several years to teach her at home.
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Still, experts continue to argue if recovery is, indeed, real or possible. Perhaps they are right. The “recovered” kids may still be socially awkward and have difficulties in expressive language.
As a parent, I ask myself: “So what?” Does it matter if my child fits the criteria of some psychiatric checklist?What matters to me is that she will be able to take care of herself and be happy when her parents are gone. That’s all I want. I am not worried about professional jargons and semantics.
Instead of debating over definitions, it would be more fruitful to focus efforts on the cause of autism and on autism treatments.
Biomedical treatment
In recent years, scientific evidence has emerged to suggest that autism has biological causes, such as toxic heavy metal poisoning, food sensitivity, nutritional deficiency and yeast infection.
Autism treatments to address these causes have contributed to what is now called “recovery”. This is one area that deserves greater study. Until more is known about autism, some 90 to 95 percent of autistic individuals will not even come close to “recovery”.
Meanwhile, it would be wise to make preparations for ‘life-long care’ – but certainly not ‘institutionalizing’. Here, the semantics do matter. Autistic individuals are not insane or mad and so they do not belong in institutions.
They are human beings with feelings. They need love and care. They need the whole-hearted commitment of medical experts in finding possible solutions in autism treatments.
They won't be helped by debates about definitions of “recovery”.
John Yeo Kee Chiang
This article was written in response to an article in The Straits Times
Mind Your Body (8 March 2006) which discussed the technical definitions
of "recovery” and whether such “recovery” is real or possible.