Posts Tagged ‘Autism’

A recent study shows the link between autism one hand, and low weight at birth and / or preterm other. For reasons still unknown, this correlation varies among girls and boys.

Autism affects about 25 people in 10 000 and 3 to 4 times more boys than girls. While it is probably present from birth, autism typically appears prominently at the age of one or two years. Characterized by a disorder of communication and contact, the disease remains largely mysterious. He now admits a genetic origin, although it is not yet clearly identified. Furthermore, a study has recently shown a link between autism and low birth weight and / or premature birth, factors that doubling the risk of being infected with this disease.

Girls against boys
This increased risk, however, varies among girls and boys. Thus, although the disease is generally more common among boys, the risk of autism for the latter is only twice as high if they have low weight (less than 2.5 kilograms) while it is up three times higher among girls featherweight. It also seems that the influence of weight and prematurity differs depending on whether the child was only diagnosed with autism or, conversely, has other problems.

There is no cure for autism. Even drugs have limited value and only serve to reduce some symptoms, such as aggressive behavior or self-destructive. The causes of this disease remain poorly understood and therefore it is not possible to develop specific drug treatments.

Among existing treatments, the most important is behavior modification. The treatment is most effective if introduced at an early age. In addition to receiving psychiatric care, children with autism working with a team of psychologists, speech therapists and occupational therapists.

Early treatment maintained long term often gives good results: many children will experience improved their language and social skills while advancing toward adulthood. Better communication and more meaningful daily experiences can improve the quality of life of people with autism.

The most obvious sign of autism in children is its inability to interact socially. Babies and infants will not respond to smiles, vocal games or other stimuli or activities in their immediate environment. The children will not follow the other eye, or make no eye contact. Children with autism do not understand facial expressions or body language of another person and do not form their own use. They do not make emotional and social ties.

In addition, many children with autism do not acquire language skills, and it is unlikely that those that do initiate a conversation. However, it is not unusual for a child with autism to repeat sentences heard in conversation or in the past.

This tendency to repeat is apparent in other behaviors associated with autism. Certain movements or gestures – such as hand flapping or twisting of the body – will be repeated again and again. The child does not participate in games using the imagination, but he can learn and imitate gestures. For example, a child who appears to the phone – dialing, talking, hanging up – will do exactly the same manner and to the same next time. This is not a sign of an active imagination, but rather the repetition of a learned behavior. Learning also occurs erratically: that a child seems to have learned one day be forgotten the next.
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Causes

There are probably a variety of factors leading to autism, but no conclusive link has been established.
Some data indicate that individuals with autism have a chemical imbalance in the brain, particularly in higher levels of serotonin. However, it was not clear whether a relationship exists between the two that would explain the presence of autism.

Heredity is a factor in a small percentage of autism. In studies of identical twins where one twin has autism, the chances that the other should also be about 85%. The probability of autism among siblings of an autistic person is above the frequency observed in the general population.

Worldwide, many research teams, together with parents of children with autism, work on autism.

Many factors are cited to explain autism, but none has yet demonstrated its role in the onset of the disease: genetic, neuro-anatomical, functional brain abnormalities, environmental factors, biological, immunological .. .

Finding a cause to this disease is all the more difficult it is manifested in many forms, the dosage of organic substances in the body are made in several laboratories around the world by different methods with results not comparable.

Researchers are nevertheless agree on the existence of the increase of stress hormone in the blood of people with autism and anxiety is a symptom of autism. It appears that stress would promote the severity of autistic disorders.

Teams of researchers, using functional MRI, have demonstrated the failure of certain functional areas of the brain of autistic people prevents them from recognizing the human voices or faces. This could explain their inability to adapt with any exterior and palpable anxiety that emanates from these people.

Autism fold excess over himself, trapped inside a shell relational whose main effect is to protect the autistic outside contacts. The emphasis on autism when an intense inner life, denying the experience of stressful world around him.

The pathology of the relationship, heavy and extremely debilitating, is addressed in psychiatric care by relational and psychoanalytic body type: body for contact, exchange and support they can maintain with the patient, and psychoanalytic insights relevant to a deeper understanding of situations.

As with most psychiatric illnesses, there is no real cure for autism the different approaches caregivers seek improved trade with the autistic patient for the opening to the outside world, while helping to overcome the anxiety which it protects itself in a pathological manner.

In the medium and longer term care will aim to maintain and to consolidate the various acquired relational, social and behavioral. Accompanying the patient will then, in terms of its autonomy, return to the bosom of his family, a foster home or admission to a suitable place to live. “