An Inspiring Autism Video

A very inspiring and encouraging video (it's short) about a autistic student who works as an assistant for a high school basketball team and the final game of the season where he suits up. Definitely worth a view.

Predicting Schizophrenia in Teens

I am a strong believer that a full psychological approach should be taken in schools. We cannot exclude the influence of mental illness on psychoeducational testing and academic success and thereby should always be cued into the full clinical picture.

A recent study examined the predictive validity of the several symptoms including (for a full list review the article):

• Spending Excessive time alone doing nothing
• Social Withdrawal
• Thinking that people are following them; Paranoid thoughts
  

Teens with one of these symptoms showed a 35 percent risk of progressing to psychosis within 2.5 years (though I suspect symptom 3 inflated this result), but more importantly students experiencing all three were at up to an 80% risk.

Unfortunately early risk identification does not lead to decreased risk. What it can do though is provide time to prepare individuals and families prior to full progression of the illness and facilitate proper referrals and monitoring.

Source: Cannon, T. D. Archives of General Psychiatry, January 2008; vol 65: pp 28-37

The Battle Over Autism's Origins

I have not thought about the Autism caused by vaccinations theories for a couple of years. After all I had read many a review articles that discounted this aged theory years ago. Yet again this week I came across a news article discussing yet another study disproving the theory and a discussion of how "activists" (which should not necessarily be read as scientists) are still not accepting the study.

These activists are quick to point out flaws in the research. The latest study postulates that since mercury has been removed from the vaccinations that were originally theorized as having an autism link and the cases of autism diagnosis has remained stable or increased that this could not be the cause. Makes sense. It is not as medically oriented as most studies but it is just another part of the picture. The activists though say that they didn't include immigration. A bizarre argument to me, and one that is only valid if they can prove that the study included an increased ratio of immigrants who had been exposed to the vaccinations.

It made me wonder why these activists are pushing such an old theory and agenda so strongly. I suspect there is a few factors:

• Money. As we saw with NLP and the recent cognitive re-training LD programs there is big money in theories related to specific schools of thought. Books; lecture tours; support materials.
• Money II. Lawyers! It is hard to sue someone for a genetic or neurodevelopmental disorder. It is a lot easier to sue over a vaccination. A class action in this area would be worth billions.
• The last option is a sad one: Blame Shifting. Though current research shows no reason at all for parents to blame themselves for their Autistic child, it is a lot easier to shift any blame one feels to anger by explaining away what appears to parents as a regressive disease as being the fault of something tangible.

The most unfortunate part of the article I read (available here) was the statement by one pharmacologist that stated, "The final answer to me will come when that paper is written that says, 'This is what causes autism'." This is a very unfortunate stance. If you look at all of the disorders we deal with (Learning, attention, mental illness) we are clearly a field that works with symptom profiles not etiology. As a result we likely have created categories that can result from multiple causes (for a concrete example look at Barkley's breakdown of ADHD into genetic/developmental/acquired causes). The "this is the cause" study that explains all cases will never come.

Updates coming again for 2008

I wanted to put together a quick little note to state that this blog will be back up and running this month. My return to private work was a bit time consuming but things are getting a bit more organized these days. So expect to see some regular updates. I am working on some original content again and some article reviews that should appear in the next day or two. See you soon!