Early Diagnosis, Individual Approach Instrumental in Treating Autism

Since the early 1970s, the Autism Society has been celebrating Autism Awareness Month in April. However, there is still work to be done to clear up a blurry - and often inaccurate - image of a disorder that for decades had gone misdiagnosed and untreated.  

One of the biggest misconceptions about autism is that everyone who has the condition is like Dustin Hoffman’s character in “Rain Man,” says Lois Rosenwald, executive director of the Connecticut Autism Spectrum Resource Center (ASRC).

“It’s a huge spectrum; some people are far from ‘Rain Man,’” she says. “Some go to college, live independently, can drive and work.”   

Rosenwald says her own son, who was diagnosed 15 years ago with a high-functioning form of autism called Asperger’s syndrome, has since graduated from college and is moving out of mom’s house to start living on his own.

“He’s had a lot of appropriate growth,” she says of her now 30-year-old son. “He’s a great joy to me.”

However, Rosenwald says that she and her son did not get to this point without having to jump over some high hurdles and – even after all the progress from more than a dozen years of treatment – some sadness remains.

“There’s certainly some sadness around certain things,” she says, like the fact that marriage might not be a viable life choice for her son because of the social problems tied to Asperger’s. But, treatment has brought her son to a level where he is capable of living on his own, and for that, Rosenwald says she is grateful.

For a long time, though, her son’s condition went undiagnosed.

“When he was younger, [before] preschool, it was different,” she says. “In those days there was no understanding. We went for many years not knowing what was going on.”  

Now, as the executive director of Wallingford-based ASRC, Rosenwald is a passionate advocate for spreading the truth about autism, which, according to a December 2009 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is prevalent in one out of every 110 births in the United States. 

The ASRC’s annual Walk and Run for Autism, one of its major fundraisers and awareness-raising events, is now in its 13th year. As of April 16, the event, held at in Wallingford on May 1, had raised more than $39,000 in donations, according to a running ticker on the event’s homepage. Donations go directly to the ASRC to fund support groups, training programs, workshops, and other resources to serve those on the autism spectrum and their families.

Rosenwald says it is the goal of her organization to consolidate a variety of resources to parents and families of loved ones on the spectrum. She says she wishes she had the use of these resources when her son was younger and undiagnosed.

However, even now with more resources at hand, the cause of autism remains a mystery, which makes it that much more important to detect early.

“Since we don’t know the cause of autism, the earlier the child is diagnosed, the better,” says Tara Glennon, an occupational therapist and professor at . “In order to diagnose as early as possible, pediatricians are asked to screen everyone,” she says, referring to an autism screening program spearheaded by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). The AAP announced the program in 2007, when autism reportedly affected one in every 150 children in the U.S.

Here are a few “red flags” – as told by Autism Speaks – that might mean a child has symptoms of Autism:

▪                No big smiles or other warm, joyful expressions by six months or thereafter.

▪                No back-and-forth sharing of sounds, smiles or other facial expressions by nine months or thereafter.

▪                No babbling by 12 months.

▪                No back-and forth gestures, such as pointing, showing, reaching or waving by 12 months.

▪                No words by 16 months.

▪                No two-word meaningful phrases (without imitating or repeating) by 24 months.

▪                Any loss of speech or babbling or social skills at any age.

Sara Reed, executive director of ASCONN or the Autism Society of Connecticut, agrees with Glennon in that the earlier symptoms can be detected, the better.

“Kids with autism can be taught to do many things, and symptoms can be ameliorated and alleviated and they can be successful,” she says.

Once accurately detected and diagnosed, the next hurdle comes: treatment.

There is no one exclusive treatment for a person on the autism spectrum because “the symptoms and the impact on participation with life tasks varies for each child,” says Glennon, adding that this variability is the reason why the common term for autism nowadays is autism spectrum disorder.

She says her job as an occupational therapist working with children with autism is to first zero in on what is meaningful to the child.

“There’s a whole range of concerns that a child might show or demonstrate,” Glennon says. “So there’s a whole range of treatments that may or may not be appropriate depending on the child’s needs.”

One common issue with children with autism, Glennon says, is the aggregate difficulty of understanding, processing, filtering or attending to sensory events in their environment.

“For example, a child may attend to things that others may originally notice but then screen out as meaningless for the task at hand, such as a flickering light,” Glennon says. “Or, the child may not notice sensory events and therefore don’t pay attention as needed, [such as] someone calling his name.”

“Occupational therapists look at what the barriers are to the child fully participating,” Glennon says. From there, intervention and supports can be outlined to address the child’s needs, she says. And from there, progress can be recorded.

“There’s a misnomer that the kids aren’t funny,” says Rosenwald. “People on the spectrum have a great sense of humor; we should all be a little looser.”