EBD Blog

Under the headline “In Switzerland, An Easier Path For The Disabled” on US National Public Radio, Julie Rovner presented a story about international differences in care for individuals with Autism. Ms. Rovner contrasts the experiences of Ellen Wallace, Nick Bates, and their 16-year-old daughter, Tara, with the experiences of Nancy Legendre, Walter Herlihy, and their two daughters, 19-year-old Julia and 17-year-old Lily. Tara, Julia, and Lily all have Autism.

Part of Ms. Rovner’s story is that the children live in different countries—Tara lives near Lausanne (CH), and Julia and Lily live in Gloucester (MA, US)—and, therefore, receive different health care. This feature of their situations affects their options for the girls’ futures.

The parents of Tara, Julia, and Lily are facing the the issues that the parents of many teens with disabilities face: How to provide care for their children during the children’s adulthood. Although it is difficult to generalize from the experiences of these two families except at the very abstract levels, Ms. Rovner’s treatment of the issue is nuanced and informative. Link to the Web-based version of the story.

I guess one can read geneses as a typographical variant on genes or, as I intended, as the plural of genesis. Using it the latter way: Emerging evidence makes it appear even more unlikely than ever that researchers will be able to identify a relative few genes—let alone the or one gene—for schizophrenia. Writing under the headline “Gene-Hunters Find Hope and Hurdles in Schizophrenia Studies,” the noted science journalist Nicholas Wade published an article summarizing research that points to the conclusion that there may be many different genetic bases for schizophrenia.

Two groups of researchers hunting for schizophrenia genes on a larger scale than ever before have found new genetic variants that point toward a different understanding of the disease.
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The variants discovered by the two groups, one led by Dr. Kari Stefansson of Decode Genetics in Iceland and the other by Dr. Pamela Sklar of the Massachusetts General Hospital, are all rare. They substantially increase the risk of schizophrenia in those affected but account for a tiny fraction of the total number of cases.

This finding, coupled with the general lack of success so far in finding common variants for schizophrenia, raises the possibility that the genetic component of the disease is due to a very large number of variants, each of which is very rare, rather than to a handful of common variants.

This is an article well worth reading. Link to Mr. Wade’s arctile.

Over on Facing Autism in New Brunswick, Harold Doherty has some news about Canadian policies regarding eligibility for receiving public support. In the post, he refers to newspaper articles by Pete McMartin that cover this issue. Here’s a snippet:

Pete McMartin is the Vancouver Sun columnist who produced, with Sun photographer Glenn Baglo, a series of articles called Faces Of Autism one of the most accurate and comprehensive presentations of autism in the main stream media. In It was wrong months ago — and it is still wrong today McMartin rips British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell and Children’s Minister Tom Christensen for reversing their stated positions on the use of an IQ of 70 as a measure in assessing elgibility of developmentally disabled persons for receipt of government services.

Link to Mr. Doherty’s post to read his full comments and for further links to Mr. McMartin’s fine journalism.

Over on Behavior Mod Info I posted an entry about workshops entitled “Functional Analysis & Treatment of Severe Behavior Disorders: Methods for Clinicians and Educators,” by Brian Iwata, Ph.D. People who are concerned about individuals with Autism (and other who might have severe behavior problems such as self-injury) would likely find these workshops useful. Here’s a link to the post where interested folks can learn more.

The US Congress will hold a briefing on the transition to adulthood for youth with serious emotional illness. This is an excellent opportunity for people in the US who are concerned about children and youths with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders and their families to reinforce public policies that are aimed at bringing some much-needed services to individuals with EBD who are making the transition for adolescence to adulthood.

Here’s an announcement from the Day Al-Mohamed, of the Public Interest Government Relations Office at the American Psychological Association:
Continue reading ‘Hearing on transition for youth’

Over on Behavior Mod Info, I’ve dropped a post about blogs from which one can learn about applications of behavior analysis to autism. Some of the readers of EBD Blog may find this of interest. Here’s the link.

For those who are interested in the placements many students with EBD experience, I have published a resource that might be of value. About 15 years ago, a group of us (Jim Kauffman, Kerri Martin, Betty Hallenbeck, and I) were interested in why students with EBD were unusually likely to be placed in more restrictive settings. To aid in that understanding we systematically gathered and assembled a data base of literature on placements of students with EBD.

I’ve put a copy of PDFs of that database in the documents section. This is the first time it has been published. It’s actually pretty dull stuff, but it might help start someone down the path of re-examining that literature in a more thorough and up-to-date review. To find the document, please follow the link to “documents” in the menu under the banner.

Over on Behavior Mod Info I have a post about an article in the New York Times that discusses uses of management procedures such as physical restraint that I think are rarely justified. Of course, many of the students with whom educators have used these techniques are students with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders. Link to the entry.

Over on Nature News Alison Abbott has a story about some of the difficulties researchers encounter in pursuing genetic causes of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders. It’s worth a read.

Psychiatric genetics: The brains of the family

Does the difficulty in finding the genes responsible for mental illness reflect the complexity of the genetics or the poor definitions of psychiatric disorders? Alison Abbott reports.
Continue reading ‘Genetic research and psychiatric classification’

In Nature Medicine, Genevive Bjorn reported that parents of some children are foregoing vaccines, deciding to expose their children directly to other children who have illnesses such as measles or chicken pox. Apparently, parents who choose this method of developing their children’s immunities communicate with each other and, when one child becomes ill, they coordinate meetings—playdates—among the child and others who have not yet developed the immunity.
Continue reading ‘Natural-immunity parties’

Guillermo Montes and Jill S. Halterman examined the relationships among multiple measures of family financial health and having a child with Autism. Based on earlier documentation that childhood autism is correlated with increases in expenses and decreases in income, they found that “Childhood autism is associated with increased enrollment into school-based settings for preschool-aged children. Parents are 7 times more likely to report that child care problems substantially affected employment decisions if they have a child with ASD.”

BACKGROUND. The impact of childhood autism on parental employment is largely unknown.

OBJECTIVE. The purpose of this work was to describe the child care arrangements of children with autism and to determine whether families of preschool-aged children with autism are more likely to report that child care arrangements affected employment compared with typically developing children and children at high risk for developmental problems.
Continue reading ‘Autism associated with family financial health’

Lenny Shafer has posted his July calendar of events related to Autism. See it at Autism Calendar