Autism and Autism Spectrum Disorders: The Prevalence and Treatment

Autism and autism spectrum disorders are a topic of concern to many people. To draw international attention to the problem of autism, which affects millions of people around the world, the UN General Assembly established World Autism Awareness Day. The events will help spread knowledge about the autism epidemic worldwide and provide information on the importance of early diagnosis and early intervention.

Autism Prevalence

Did you know that… Autism and autism spectrum disorder affect 67 million people worldwide? Autism is a developmental delay leading to disability that is becoming common in the world. Boys are four times more likely to be diagnosed with autism than girls. There is no medical way to detect and treat autism, but early diagnosis and prompt intervention can improve outcomes.

What does the statistics show? 

• In 2021, the CDC reported that approximately 1 in 44 children in the U.S. is diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD), according to 2018 data.
  • 1 in 27 boys identified with autism
  • 1 in 116 girls identified with autism
• Boys are four times more likely to be diagnosed with autism than girls.
• Most children were still being diagnosed after age 4, though autism can be reliably diagnosed as early as age 2.
• 31% of children with ASD have an intellectual disability (intelligence quotient [IQ] <70), 25% are in the borderline range (IQ 71–85), and 44% have IQ scores in the average to above average range (i.e., IQ >85).
• Autism affects all ethnic and socioeconomic groups.

What is autism? General view

Autism is found in all racial, ethnic, and social groups and is four times more likely in boys than in girls. As a rule, autism spectrum disorders are diagnosed more accurately at the age of 3 years, although a preliminary diagnosis can usually be made in children between the ages of one and a half to 2 years.

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and childhood autism are one of the most complex problems in medicine. Difficulties in diagnosing autism are due to the absence of specific complaints and clinical symptoms characteristic only of autism. However, by observing the behavior of the child and his communication with others, an attentive doctor can promptly suspect the presence of autism in children. At the same time, I want to emphasize that it is possible to suspect the disease even in the first year of life.

CEU Outlet’s 4-hour CE course “Autism Spectrum Disorder” provides the overview of  Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and the problems that may come accompany ASD, diagnosis, cause and treatment options of ASD.

Awareness of the problem and action

Screening methods for detecting children at risk are available for 18-month-old toddlers. Such a check may occur during a routine medical examination of the child. A child with autism can and should be helped to adapt to life, but this requires adequate education, training, and love.

What are the causes of autism? 

To date, there is no exact data on the causes of autism. However, there is a high probability that genetic and neurophysiological abnormalities are only a prerequisite for the development of autism, while external factors such as environmental conditions, infectious diseases, weakened immune system, prematurity, etc., can also influence the development of autism. 

How does autism manifest itself? 

Each of us, who in one way or another encountered people with autism, paid attention to the peculiarities of their behavior and communication. Note that autism is very, very diverse.  Autism in a general type of developmental disorder externally takes on very different forms. It includes both a deeply maladjusted speechless child with a low level of mental development, and children with brilliant “adult” speech and early to abstract areas of knowledge, selective giftedness. 

Let us summarize the manifestations of distorted development and single out the leading signs:

– violation of social interaction, lack of reactions to the emotions of other people, changes in the social situation.

– communication disorders (non-contact, lack of emotional reaction to an attempt to start a conversation with a person, speech addressed to oneself).

– a kind of speech development (from the complete absence of speech to pretentious “adult” speech, insufficient flexibility of speech expression, impaired use of intonation, use of atypical sounds, cries in speech).

– the use of peripheral vision for all types of contact (autistic does not look into the eyes, look “through” or from the side).

– stereotyping, repeatability of behavior.

– a tendency to a rigid once and for all order in everyday life, a painful reaction to changes in this order.

– a limited range of interests (highly specialized outstanding interests).

– attachment to rituals of a non-functional nature (preoccupation with dates, routes, schedules).

– violations and selectivity in food intake, choice of clothes, toys, activities

– violation of the sense of self-preservation.

– fears, sleep disturbances, outbursts of anger and aggression.

Thus, autism is characterized by a triad of core symptoms – a violation of communication, social interaction, and stereotyped behavior, as well as facultative signs that can occur in other developmental disorders. 

What approaches to teaching people with autism are most in demand today?

This question is of interest to both parents and teachers who work with this category of children. Today there is a variety of approaches to working with people with ASD. Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA). It involves planning, applying, and evaluating the impact on factors in the environment that lead to changes in human behavior based on social significance. The categories of people for whom this approach is recommended include those with severe autism, severe mental retardation, and Down syndrome. The goal of ABA is to increase desirable and decrease undesirable behavior, which hinders learning and social interaction. In other words, it is a strategy of “positive reinforcement” and “functional evaluation of behavior.”

The next approach demanded by families of children with autism is Ayres sensory Integration (ASI), Jean Ayres’ sensory integration method. Its essence lies in establishing the interaction of all sensory systems to be able to build adequate relationships with other people, mastering different ways of interacting with objects in everyday life.

The TEACH methodology or Structured Teaching is currently known and widely used in the world. Includes the following structuring types: Physical organization; Schedule/Daily schedule; Organization of the workflow / Work System. The purpose of this work is to teach children household skills and socialization of autistic children. The advantages of the technique are the ability to achieve controllability of the child in a limited space and the absence of the need for 100% involvement of parents in the work. Suitable for children with the most severe and multiple developmental disorders. The elements of this technique – visual schedule, zoning of the room based on the proposed activities, minimization of interference and stimulation – are widely used in the work of speech pathologists.

To help such a child to form a more active and constructive position in relations with the world, outside of which the normalization of his development is impossible, an emotional-semantic approach is developed and used. Semantic, because the main task is the accumulation and meaningful ordering of the individual affective experience of the child, one that can become a support for the development of active and differentiated relations with the environment. Emotional, because the main means of helping the child is living together and emotionally understanding what is happening. Despite the difficulty of establishing emotional contact, the need for it in children with autism exists, with an understanding of the specifics of mental development disorders in autism, this task is quite reliably solved by a specialist.

Emotional contagion allows you to tone up the child, and this makes it easier for him to endure discomfort, increases activity in contacts and stimulates the emergence of imitation, opens the prospect of adding variety to the usual pleasant impressions. Combining in a common enjoyable activity, in which an adult makes emotional sense from the very beginning, creates opportunities for their transformation into a game that includes persistent, repetitive episodes of interaction. These episodes are built and developed based on pleasant sensory stimulation preferred by the child, but at the same time they are comprehended as playing familiar and pleasant moments of real life. In the joint emotional living of these episodes, the daily life experience of the child is updated, positively comprehended, and meaningfully organized. which becomes the basis and support for the development of its own more active and complex forms of interaction with the environment. The stereotype of life defended by the child gradually differentiates meaningfully and enriched, becomes less rigid, i.e., comes closer to the meaningful way of ordinary and comfortable home life, and the picture of his world becomes more coherent and habitable.

This is a permanent and long-term job. It is carried out in special classes, in a joint game, drawing, reading, watching cartoons and filmstrips. It is clear that the purpose of the classes is not the development of gaming or visual activity and not providing the child with the opportunity to simply “splash out” impressions. This is, first of all, communication with the child, and it can be organized on a very different basis. Its goal is the same – a joint understanding of what happened in home life, in kindergarten, seen on a walk, in a zoo, in a circus, at a reception in a clinic, etc. And the same work falls on the shoulders of the child’s relatives, in the joint living of everyday life, with the help of emotional commentary, they meaningfully organize for the child the impressions of what is happening.

This is also seen as the main task of the work of a tutor accompanying a child in kindergarten and at school. The accumulation of positive experience opens up the possibility of gradually helping the child to master more active and complex forms of individual life. In the development of selectivity that does not fence off, but connects it with the world, in achieving the ability not to panic and consider an unexpected obstacle as surmountable, i.e., as a condition of a solvable task, enter into a dialogue with circumstances, focus on the emotional assessment of another person.

In living together and experiencing, an adult helps the child to connect, overcome the discomfort or fear he feels, change, if necessary, the emotional meaning of an unpleasant, frightening impression. And each successful step in the normalization of the affective development of such a child gives us new opportunities to help him in intellectual and social development, because the development of the child’s mental functions begins to be organized by real demands for active interaction with a loved one and the environment.

Final Thoughts

There is no cure for autism spectrum disorder or universal treatment. The goal of treatment is to maximize your child’s ability to function by relieving the symptoms of ASD and supporting development and learning. Early intervention in preschool can help your child learn important social, communication, functional and behavioral skills.
It should also be noted that each parent of an autistic child has the right to independently choose methods and approaches to his education and development, based on his view of the prospects for his further socialization. However, we should not forget that every child with autism is a Personality with their own interests, hobbies, talents, skills, difficulties, and opportunities, so it is very important not to harm the child, not to interfere with his development.