Tag Archive for 'Parents'

Can a child recover from Autism?

Published on 27 January 2013 in Autism, Families, News, Research and The press. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , .

Yesterday I wrote about how, when people consider individual cases, the possibility of improvement for children with Autism might make otherwise inert therapies appear to be beneficial. In yesterday’s post I referred to research by Molly Helt and colleagues (2008) about recovery among individuals with Autism, and I hinted about an important recent study by Deborah Fein and her colleagues (2013) related to that phenomenon. Today I discuss that second study.

The more recent study is just another among many by Professor Fein, who was a principal author on the Helt et al. (2008) study, and who has been doing exemplary work about Autism and Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) for many years. In this one she provides new data about “recovery,” a word they rarely use in the course of their article.

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Mothers agree on helping children with mental illness and their families

Published on 17 December 2012 in Families, Mental health, News, Policy, Prevention and The press. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , .

Liza Long is the author of the post, “I am Adam Lanza’s Mother,” that has gone viral in the few days following the mass murder that Mr. Lanza apparently committed at Sandy Hook Elementary School 14 December 2012. In it, Ms. Long—who obviously is not the deceased mother of Mr. Lanza—makes an important, impassioned, and strong case for focusing on mental health issues among children and youth. Here’s the beginning of that post.

In the wake of another horrific national tragedy, it’s easy to talk about guns. But it’s time to talk about mental illness.
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Nature: De novo mutations, autism, and schizophrenia, redux

Published on 23 August 2012 in Autism, Causes, News, Research, Schizophrenia and The press. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

In Nature a group of researchers from Denmark and Iceland report the results of their studies of mutation rates of Icelandic parent-child groups. They found that the level of new mutations, called a “de novo mutations,” in their samples when father’s average age was 29.7 was 1.20?X?10?8 per nucleotide per generation, but that number increases by two every year. In round numbers one might estimate that at about 20 years of age a father’s single sperm cell could carry 25 new spontaneous mutations, but at 40 years of age it might carry more than 65.
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US ED resource on restraint and seclusion

Published on 15 May 2012 in Administration, Advocacy, Behavior management, Families, News, Policy, The press and Treatment. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

The US Department of Education (ED) published Restraint and Seclusion: Resource Document today. After the extensive discussions the last few years about abuses of management procedures (see , especially those used with children and youths with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders, ED contracted with an agency to create this document that provides guidelines for the appropriate use of restraints and seclusion.

The foundation of any discussion about the use of restraint and seclusion is that every effort should be made to structure environments and provide supports so that restraint and seclusion are unnecessary. As many reports have documented, the use of restraint and seclusion can, in some cases, have very serious consequences, including, most tragically, death. There is no evidence that using restraint or seclusion is effective in reducing the occurrence of the problem behaviors that frequently precipitate the use of such techniques.

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