By tying funding to disability categories, schools and parents are being put under pressure to seek a diagnosis for their child in order to get funding support.
“Autism explosion”, declared The Australian’s headline on January 15. “Schools failing”. Journalist Rick Morton’s piece led with an alleged: … crisis in schools that education systems are unable or willing…
A recent review of studies has shown that mindfulness meditation helps people with intellectual disabilities and autism spectrum disorder reduce their mental and physical problems.
Baseless claims about the damage done to kids’ development create needless panic. And they distract from legitimate, evidence-based concerns with which parents need to engage.
Technologies that predict the possibility of a neurological disorder have the weight of affecting conceptions of not just “what” these children have but “who” these children will become.
People with autism spectrum disorder don’t get the same benefits from socialising with other people. So why force them to with methods that aren’t true to life anyway?
Increasing autistic children’s levels of vasopressin, a hormone that regulates social behaviour, could help treat the social deficits common to autism, research suggests.
Autism is usually diagnosed between the ages of two and five. But studies show therapies delivered earlier in childhood could help children at risk of developing autism.
Jim Carrey’s anti-vaccination tweets employ a number of techniques used by anti-science cranks. By understanding them, we can shield ourselves from well-intentioned but ill-informed voices.
Jeffrey Craig, Murdoch Children's Research Institute; Anthony Hannan, Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, and Yuk Jing Loke, Murdoch Children's Research Institute
The epigenetic ‘musicians’ that play our genomes in different ways might help us understand the causes of autism.