Comments on: An Even Bigger Epidemic?: Children’s Mental Health Disorders

By: Autism Vox » The Age of What Diagnosis Does Your Child Have

Autism Vox » The Age of What Diagnosis Does Your Child Have — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 07:54:44 +0000

[...] My answer to the 2nd question is “yes, it really was not so great to let a ‘quirky kid’ tough it out on their own,” and I also answer “yes” to the 4th question. Have we come as far as we can in diagnosing and labeling our children (and ourselves)—to the point that some claim that there is an epidemic of children’s mental health disorders—and is some whole other approach that is not about diagnoses and labels in order? Can there be some other way of describing, talking about, understanding who and what and how our children (and ourselves) are in all their varieties of being and experience? [...]

By: Kristina Chew, PhD

Kristina Chew, PhD — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 17:22:27 +0000

We have plenty of those binders in our house…….

By: steve johnson

steve johnson — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 13:02:40 +0000

This is an interesting discussion. My 11 year old son with autism would never have been missed in years past as just being strange unfortunately. We data points and analysis for the daily behavior children exhibit that can be compared over time. Currently, most of this information is in 3 ring binders (or not tracked at all by the schools). It is one of the reasons we use a free application for tracking the teams information (www.iabida.com). Maybe after time we can show our own data and how different our children are from many of the others out there.

By: Kristina Chew, PhD

Kristina Chew, PhD — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 23:43:11 +0000

Not at all! I think your perspective needs to be heard.

By: Someone

Someone — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 22:45:52 +0000

I’m not trying to annoy you at all; I do respect you for the most part.

The point of my post was that true, autism can cause such things like hyperlexia, OCD, anxiety and eccentricity, but so can so many other things. You can’t just look at the symptoms and say “mild form of autism”, even though it may be tempting; autism is far more complex than just that, and you also have to look at why those symptoms are there. I’m sorry if I sound condescending, I don’t mean to.

By: Kristina Chew, PhD

Kristina Chew, PhD — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 19:06:52 +0000

Potentially, and “purely speculative.”

By: Someone

Someone — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 18:13:13 +0000

“What if there are actually twice as many autistic persons as the current prevalence rate of 1 in 166 estimates, due to there being many more persons who have autism but not to the extent that this results in “significant functional impairment”? These latter cases could be those whose whose autism may be so “mild” that they do not even have an actual diagnosis of autism, whether someone who has “eccentric” behaviors and perhaps some obsessive-compulsive qualities or anxiety, or a child who is hyperlexic, is so shy that he attends social skills camp, and must have “everything Thomas the Tank Train.””

I’m not trying to be a troll, but I think that this a potentially dangerous way of thinking about autism.