Autism Essay -- Health, Diseases

Autism first appeared as an identified disorder of children in the 1930s and has been increasing in incidence ever since, to the point that in 2002, nearly 120,000 children with autism were being served under the Individual with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)—an increase of 500 percent over the previous decade. In the United States as a whole, it is believed that 1.5 million Americans are living with one form or another of autism (www.healthinschools.org/focus/2005/no2.htm). In his classic paper Kanner (1943) identified three essential features of infantile autism (i.e., social isolation, need for sameness and mutism or non-communicative speech). The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM IV TR – APA, 2000) summarizes the current view of the basic diagnostic features of autism as â€Å"Qualitative impairment in social interaction and communication and restricted repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behavior, interests and activities† (pp. ). One recent study, conducted by Suhail and Zafar (2008), shown that the prevalence of autism in Lahore, Pakistan, is 6.31%. Results further elaborated that the equally more common characteristics of autism in these children were â€Å"relating to people†, â€Å"emotional responses† and â€Å"visual responses’, followed by â€Å"general impression†, â€Å"imitation†, â€Å"taste†, â€Å"smell† and â€Å"touch response and use† and â€Å"verbal communication†. The least commonly observed area was â€Å"level and consistency of intellectual response†. Autism is quite prevalent in Pakistan but there is a huge gap of research in this field. The statistics about its prevalence is almost non-existent. According to Azeem (2009) the number of people falling in autism spectrum disorders is a minimum of 3,45,600 out of 172,800,048 population of... ... vision and Dailiness. This study is a very good example of developing theory out of the action research. Relevant methodology have been employed in the present research in which action research has been conducted to evaluate the efficacy of multi-pronged interventions with an autistic child and a grounded theory has been developed out of the therapist’s reflections of that whole action research process. In the end, after reviewing the literature available about the use and efficacy of intensive humanistic approach and expressive therapies in working with autism, we can clearly see that this could turn out to be a very good combination of multi-pronged intervention plan with autistic children if implemented at early age. Furthermore, it is a novel but fruitful idea to extract theory out of the reflections reporting the action research process in psychology.