A study from Minnesota look at how adults with Asperger’s Syndrome compare to others and offers a sense of hope. The study was done by Kim Klein, a pediatric neuropsychologist at the Fraser Center and Pat Pulice. From today’s CBS4.com:

“We’ve found that in some ways, this population is doing as well as their peers. They’ve been successful in obtaining employment. They’ve been successful in pursuing their hobbies,” said Pulice.

“Virtually all of the young adults with Asperger’s disorder graduated from high school, same as our control group,” said Klein. “Forty-five percent went on to college or some type of post-secondary education; identical rates to the control group.”

Klein and Pulice also noted that no one in the study with Asperger’s had reported problems with illegal drugs, alcohol or cigarettes; 25 percent of the other participants did. 69 percent of the participants with Asperger’s were found to be more likely to be treated with medication for depression, versus 39 percent of those who did not have Asperger’s. Much information about the study can be found on the Fraser Center’s website.

Included in the economic bailout bill signed by President Bush last Friday, October 3, was a new law requiring equal coverage of mental and physical illnesses. Go here to read H.R. 1424, SEC. 512. MENTAL HEALTH PARITY, Subtitle B–Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008.

The October 5th New York Times quotes Dr. Steven E. Hyman, a former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, as saying that “it was impossible to justify insurance discrimination when an overwhelming body of scientific evidence showed that ‘mental illnesses represent real diseases of the brain.’” More specifically:

“Genetic mutations and unlucky combinations of normal genes contribute to the risk of autism and schizophrenia…..There is also strong evidence that people with schizophrenia have thinning of the gray matter in parts of the brain that permit us to control our thoughts and behavior.”

The new law will now make is easier for people to get treatment for conditions such as depression, autism, schizophrenia, eating disorders and alcohol and drug abuse. Employments and group health plans have set limits to hospital stays and to the number of outpatient visits for mental health treatments, and insurers have set higher co-payments and deductibles; under the new law, these will restrictions are eliminated.

As Regan noted, a “collateral benefit” to the passage of the bailout bill.

It’s a too familiar story to too many of us: Growing numbers of children diagnosed on the autism spectrum and school districts straining, and groaning, under the need (the onus) to provide appropriate services and educational placements, aides and speech therapists who know how to teach an autistic child and not only run articulation drills, and to educate students with widely varying needs and levels of skills. Inadequate funding for special ed and all the more so as districts facing rising costs and no change in state funding, so that districts have to seek support locally from taxpayers.

Does this sound like something that happened in your school district, and is even happening now?

Yesterday’s Flathead Beacon (Montana) notes that

In Montana, statistics from the state’s Office of Public Instruction show the number of autistic students has swelled from 212 in the 2001-2002 school year to 442 last year – a 52 percent increase in just seven years. The number of autistic students jumped 9 percent between 2006 and 2007 alone.

“Our increase follows the national trend; it’s our fastest growing need,” OPI Superintendent Linda McCulloch said. “I’ve requested funding this year for five autism specialists – one specialist for each mental health region in the state – to assist with needs for the schools.”

The Montana Quality Education Coalition and other education groups have filed a lawsuit against the state and say that the state has failed to come up with a formula for adequate special ed funding.

And due to recent current events in the US, increases in funding for education seem unlikely—one suspects that the same stories will be heard numerous times over.

Given what’s going on in the world right now—this thing called an “economic crisis“—reporting about what one celebrity said about what another actress said about vaccines seems, well, something to remark upon and move on from, in order to read about how the financial crisis might affect credit for school districts. From Education Week today:

With investment firms such as Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. going out of business, and others consolidating, there are fewer buyers for the bonds issued by districts to pay for such projects as new schools and major repairs, according to Susan Gaffney, the director of the federal-liaison center for the Government Finance Officers Association, in Washington.

“The market dynamic is that there are fewer players, and that could drive up the cost of borrowing in the long run,” she said.

In 2007, about $107 billion in education- related bonds was issued.

The financial crisis hit home this week for Laurens County School District 56 in Clinton, S.C., which postponed selling $28 million in bonds on the advice of the district’s financial adviser, said the superintendent, Wayne Brazell. The district planned to try again Oct. 1.

“We have been advised that there will be buyers on that day,” Mr. Brazell said in an e-mail. “We are building a new high school, and we need [the money] to finish the project.”

Education Week also notes that another shock to school budgets is likely to occur early next year year, due to home foreclosures stemming from troubled subprime mortgages.

“We’re just starting to realize what’s going on with the home foreclosures,” said John Musso, the executive director of the Association of School Business Officials International, based in Reston, Va.

Collectively, states have amassed more than $40 billion in budget deficits, in large part because of a drop in tax revenues from the slumping real estate market.

A dozen states—maybe more—have had to impose “targeted cuts on K-12 education programs.”

On the other hand, if all of this makes you get a pit in your stomach, a little a verbal vaccine catfight might be a relative …. innocuous….?…… way to distract your midnd.

What effect will the financial crisis have on the US education budget? Today’s Ed Week notes:

Congress late last week approved a bill extending funding for most education programs and other parts of the federal budget at fiscal 2008 levels through March 6, when the new administration will have been in office for more than a month.

If lawmakers agreed on a fiscal 2009 appropriations bill financing the Department of Education by March 6, it would be up to the new president to sign it.

But what now, in the wake of the US House of Representatives rejecting a $700 billion rescue of the financial industry?

(I realize that this post is very focused on matters in the US and on the US economy in particular but—living in a New Jersey that is well-populated with people who “work in finance,” it’s getting really tense around here.)

A new study has found that burning incense—as in frankincense, the resin from the Boswellia plant—

“activates poorly understood ion channels in the brain to alleviate anxiety or depression. This suggests that an entirely new class of depression and anxiety drugs might be right under our noses anxiety and causes other antidepressant activity in the brain.”

We’ve already heard about this as an autism treatment so don’t be surprised if frankincense gets added to the list—-not that spikenard hasn’t already been proposed (if you read the matrixes in Revelation 13 about autism, dioxin, devoured souls, and metals.)

Sunday’s New York Times had an article about “Mad Pride”: More people with “severe forms of mental illness such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder” are now speaking out about “their demons”:

About 5.7 million Americans over 18 have bipolar disorder, which is classified as a mood disorder, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Another 2.4 million have schizophrenia, which is considered a thought disorder. The small slice of this disparate population who have chosen to share their experiences with the public liken their efforts to those of the gay-rights and similar movements of a generation ago.

Just as gay-rights activists reclaimed the word queer as a badge of honor rather than a slur, these advocates proudly call themselves mad; they say their conditions do not preclude them from productive lives.

One of the persons interviewed for the article is a law professor and associate dean at the University of Southern California, Elyn Saks, who has schizophrenia; she did not reveal her diagnosis until after she had received tenure.

Autism as I understand it, as I know it from my son Charlie, and as I write about it here, is not a mental illness. It’s a neurological disorder. Nonetheless, there’s been a side-discussion going on about autism, trauma, and neurosis in an older post I did on Floortime therapy, in which autism is referred to as psychological and even psychogenic. If there’s one theory about autism causation that today’s parents universally reject, it is that they themselves “caused” a child to become autistic due to the parents being emotionally withdrawn, as stated in the infamous “refrigerator mother theory.”

One could argue that some of the past and present stigma cast upon autistic individuals is in part because of misconceptions not only of autism, but of mental illness. More about “Mad Pride” in the New York Times:

Members of the mad pride movement do not always agree on their aims and intentions. For some, the objective is to continue the destigmatization of mental illness. A vocal, controversial wing rejects the need to treat mental afflictions with psychotropic drugs and seeks alternatives to the shifting, often inconsistent care offered by the medical establishment. Many members of the movement say they are publicly discussing their own struggles to help those with similar conditions and to inform the general public.

“It used to be you were labeled with your diagnosis and that was it; you were marginalized,” said Molly Sprengelmeyer, an organizer for the Asheville Radical Mental Health Collective, a mad pride group in North Carolina. “If people found out, it was a death sentence, professionally and socially.”

She added, “We are hoping to change all that by talking.”

The confessional mood encouraged by memoirs and blogs, as well as the self-help advocacy movement in mental health, have deepened the understanding of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

It’s the stigma attached to mental illness that rings true. There’s been more than a few people whom we’ve heard say things like “he’s nuts!” or “what’s wrong with that kid?” about Charlie. Certainly we strive to teach Charlie that home and the car are the safe places to do some things, but I also know that some seemingly “odd behaviors” that Charlie might do (like the curious and loud barking sound he’s been making of late) are how he communicates how he feels about being in some public situations. We try to teach him to talk and not be quite that loud, and we also hope seeing Charlie out and about might teach people that autism, too, is not a “death sentence.”

And as far as pride—I can never say enough about how proud I am of Charlie.

(But you probably already know that.)

Update, 3.10pm: For a transcript of the Town Hall forum, you can go here.

If you tried to post a comment and it did not appear, you can send it to dkmnow (at-thing) yahoo (dot-thing) com, or leave it in the comments section below.

Today from 11 a.m. - 1 p.m., the NYU Child Study Center is holding an Online Town Hall on Children’s Mental Health. Details can be found here; registration starts at 9 a.m. today and commenters have contributed thoughts on what to address in the forum. How can we improve awareness and care for individuals with conditions like autism, Asperger’s Syndrome, bulimia, OCD, depression, and in ways that do not simply denounce and shame people? How can we advertise not fear, but hope?

Back in December, the New York University Child Study Center launched a public awareness advertisement campaign called “Ransom Notes,” in which. The campaign was pulled a few weeks later, in no small part due to the work of disability rights advocacy groups, parents, and many concerned individuals, who questioned the negative portrayal of autism and psychiatric disorders by the “Ransom Notes” campaign. On Tuesday, February 26, 2008 from 11 a.m. - 1 p.m., the NYU Child Study Center is holding an Online Town Hall on Children’s Mental Health. Details can be found here. How can we improve awareness and care of these issues, in ways that do not simply denounce and shame those with conditions like autism, Asperger’s Syndrome, bulimia, OCD, depression?