World Autism Day is celebrated on 2 April each year. Autism, a disease often seen in film and television dramas or newspapers, seems familiar and distant to us ordinary people.
Autism, also known as "autism." In fact, the prevalence of autism is very high, and the latest international epidemiological survey shows that the prevalence of autism reaches a high of 1-2 ‰, that is, more than 1 in every 1,000 children have autism.
With the development of society, as well as the popularization of medical knowledge by the public, the rate of medical treatment has increased, according to statistics, the number of autism in recent years has exceeded 10 million, of which 2 million children under the age of 12.
Behind these 2 million children with autism are 2 million pairs of parents who are under mental pressure, who travel back and forth between the family and the autism rehabilitation institution day after day, just so that the child can recover as soon as possible, hoping to give them an ordinary life.
Today we will come together to understand such a group of "children from the stars".
First, what is autism?
In 1943, an American doctor of child psychiatry, Leo Kenner, discovered 11 special pediatric patients who were extremely withdrawn, uninterested in everyone, including their parents, and unable to develop any relationship with them. Their speech skills develop slowly, they always repeat meaningless things, they don't respond to calling their names, and they don't communicate with others in language. Their bodies are clumsy, and they play games that are monotonous, repetitive, and very fond of numbers, letters, notes, and spinning circular objects. At the same time, they hate to change the environment, they have super memory and musical ability beyond ordinary people.
Dr. Leo Kenner felt that the performance of these 11 children was very similar to that of schizophrenia, but not exactly the same. So he named the disease "early-onset infantile autism" and published a related paper to study.
But the medical community at that time did not pay much attention to this discovery, which was related to the fact that there were too few cases of autism in children, and also speculated whether "autism" was a manifestation of schizophrenia in childhood, and some psychiatrists believed that autism may be related to the parenting style of parents.
Until 1968, the British child psychiatrist Michael Lutter, through a large number of studies, distilled the four basic characteristics of "autism":
1. Lack of interest and responsibility in society, and unusual indifference or strangeness towards social interaction and communication.
2. Language development is slow, or even damaged.
3, there are a lot of strange movements and behaviors, mainly manifested as very limited hobbies, like highly repetitive games or behaviors
4. Onset of illness before 30 months.
Michael Lutter's research has thoroughly clarified the difference between autism and schizophrenia, and determined that "autism" is a separate disease, not an early manifestation of schizophrenia.
Meanwhile, Michael Lutter's study of "identical twins" and "fraternal twins" found that the onset of "autism" had nothing to do with the parenting style of the parents, and that "autism" was a disease caused by abnormal development in early childhood.
So, what are the main manifestations of autistic children, let's take a specific look at it.
Second, the performance of autistic children
According to modern medical research and symptomatic standards, as well as the provisions of the International Classification of Diseases (10th Edition), children with common autism have the following common manifestations:
(It should be noted here that the diagnosis of autism is a very complex process, including consultation, life questionnaire, psychological test, exclusion diagnosis, etc., which must be confirmed by a professional pediatric psychiatrist.) At the same time, the onset of autism is mostly within 3 years of age. ）
1, they lack interest in collective games, such as peek-a-boo, home, etc., they often give people a sense of loneliness, can not have emotional resonance with the joy of collective activities.
2, they lack the skills to communicate with others, it is difficult to establish friends and partnerships with their peers, can only be simply expressed as pulling people, pushing people, hugging as a way of interacting with peers.
3, they often like to entertain themselves, the surrounding environment is difficult to affect them, including the absence of parents, there is no impact and reaction to them.
4, they do not use eye contact, they rarely look at people, and they rarely use facial expressions, gestures, and postures to communicate with others.
5, they will not do "over the family", "role play" (such as playing a policeman, doctor) and other role-playing and imitation of social games.
6) When they are unwell or unhappy, they do not seek comfort and sympathy; they do not show concern and comfort to others who are unwell or unhappy.
7, their language ability to develop slowly, even do not use language expression, will not use gestures, imitation and other ways to communicate with others.
8. After a long time, their language comprehension ability is obviously impaired, and they often cannot understand the meaning of others, and they will not express their needs and pains. At the same time, he rarely asks questions of others and does not react to the words of others.
9) Their ability to learn languages is very poor, but they often imitate meaningless words, tones, words, and so on.
10, they often repeat words and phrases that have nothing to do with the surrounding environment, and even make strange noises from time to time.
11. Some children with autism can master certain speech skills, but they do not take the initiative to talk to others, nor do they continue to talk to others, or simply answer.
12, their language tone, pronunciation, speaking speed, speaking rhythm, etc. are very strange, giving people a stereotyped, monotonous, pale feeling.
13, their interests are very limited, often focusing on a certain repetitive pattern, such as a rotating fan, a monotonous advertising word, and so on.
14, sometimes they will show excessive activity, walking back and forth, running, turning in circles and so on.
15 Once they stop these stereotyped repetitive movements or postures, they will show obvious irritability and even scream in anger.
16 Sometimes they manifest themselves as extreme attachment to part of certain smells, objects, or toys and feel very satisfied.
17 They sometimes manifest themselves as compulsively doing special, but meaningless, actions or activities.
It is important to note that not every child with autism presents all of these manifestations, but most of the time, they manifest themselves in most of the behaviors.
Of course, the final diagnosis goes through the diagnosis of a child psychiatrist.
What we have to do is that if we find or suspect that there is something abnormal in the child, we should go to the pediatric psychiatric clinic in time. Because the sooner a child with autism is detected and treated, the better the recovery effect.
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This article is original by "Relaxed Psychology", welcome to pay attention to, take you along with long knowledge!
