Special Needs

Introduction

The word “autism” comes from the Greek ‘autos’ which means self. Autism is one of a range of disorders of development known as Pervasive Developmental Disorders. It is associated with profound problems of speech, behaviour and social relationships. Autism is a disorder that develops in early childhood. It is four times more prevalent in boys than in girls.

Children with autism do not display a fixed set of symptoms. This means that one child’s symptom may be different from another and the symptoms may vary in their severity. The symptoms may also combine in a unique way for each child thereby producing different sets of problems or difficulties among children with autism. For this reason, autism is commonly referred to as Autistic Spectrum Disorders.

At the mild end of the autism spectrum is Asperger Syndrome, sometimes referred to as “high functioning autism.” Children with Asperger Syndrome do not have general language delay and many have average or even above average intelligence.

History

In 1943 in the USA, Leo Kanner was the first to recognise autism, and published his landmark paper. Prior to this date, children with autism were categorised as either intellectually disabled or suffering from an emotional problem.

Around the same time, a Viennese paediatrician Hans Aspergerindependently made the same observations. Although there was considerable overlap in the clinical features, Asperger’s subjects tended to be less severely affected, and had a higher IQ.

In the early 1970s and 1980s, the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) Classification of Mental and Behavioural Disorders and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder (DSM) had different concepts of autism although the diagnostic criteria for the disorder were similar. Today, both the ICD and DSM classify autism as a Pervasive Developmental Disorder.