The federal government is getting into autism treatment. It's about time: The number of kids in special education programs diagnosed with the condition has shot up sixfold in the past 10 years, from under 20,000 to nearly 120,000. And that's just among 6-to-21-year-olds. Younger children probably add several tens of thousands to the total, although reliable numbers are hard to come by.
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An explanation for the increase is also hard to come by, though more awareness of the illness by the public and by doctors probably means more children are being diagnosed today. What they are being diagnosed with is a poorly understood disorder that shows up as a restricted ability to communicate and a wide range of behavioral problems, with some children so uncontrollable that they need constant supervision–often institutionalization–so they don't hurt themselves or others. Other kids have mild symptoms and can be in a regular classroom and lead fairly normal lives.
This week, the National Institute of Mental Health, as part of a public-private partnership, announced a new agenda to boost research on the origins of autism and effective treatments for the disorder. Andy Shih of the National Alliance for Autism Research says the research is key to earlier diagnosis, which in turn is key to better outcomes, both for kids and their families.
A major focus will be studying early, intensive, behavior therapy. Things such as taking one task, like going to the bathroom, and breaking it apart into several separate subtasks can be very effective for some autistic kids. But not all kids benefit, and researchers would love to find out why. So, of course, would thousands of parents. They'll also be waiting to hear how much money the government is willing to spend on this initiative. No one has put a figure on that yet.
Foreign accent syndrome
Recovering the ability to speak after a stroke is a major triumph. For one Florida woman, however, it has been a somewhat puzzling victory. When she started talking again, fluently, it was with a clipped British accent.
A communication disorders expert has diagnosed this as a rare case of "foreign accent syndrome," his university announced this week. There are other such cases described in medical literature, but fewer than 20 of them. The expert, Jack Ryalls of the University of Central Florida, says the problem seems linked to damage to the left hemisphere of the brain, where a lot of language processing occurs.
The woman in question has never been to England, but she certainly sounded as if she had been brought up there, even to her family. And strangers constantly asked her where she was from. The enforced foreign identity can be a problem. One of the early reported cases of the syndrome involved a Norwegian woman, hit in the head by shrapnel during World War ii. She recovered, but she spoke with a German accent. Her community ostracized her. (Norway and Germany were not on the best of terms at the time.)
The Florida woman avoided a lot of social contact and developed a fear of going outside and encountering strangers. The accent, apparently, is not amenable to speech therapy. The change in speech patterns seems amusing from the outside, but the changes in self-image, and in the reactions of others, brings on a struggle for identity that can be quite serious.
