“With a bit of faith, tears and Robogirl”
I refer to “With a bit of faith, tears and Robogirl” (Today, May 26, 2006) by Mr Brown, and wish to comment on three issues he has raised in his article.
Firstly, Mr Brown began his article giving his reason why an EEG was needed to be done on his autistic daughter, Faith, to check if her behavioral issues were the result of some neurological problem. At present, brain scans of autistic children are not done routinely, but only if the specialist feels a scan is needed, either for research purposes, or in cases when this may be important in the care of the child, especially when there is epilepsy as well. In such situations, the reasons for a scan can the details of the procedure are explained to the parents. If parents have concerns about this, it is worth discussing them with the doctor. In fact, the procedure is very similar to a standard X-ray.
However, as with postmortem and scanning investigations to date, no clear cut abnormality has been found in the brain in autistic people. The EEG may still be necessary in assessing epilepsy and a minority of autistic children does suffer from epilepsy.
Secondly, Mr Brown has rightly stated that many autistic children are not savants. The term “autistic savant” was first coined by Dr Bernard Rimland and was used to describe the character played by Dustin Hoffman in the movie Rain Man. The best documented examples of savant abilities or special skills in autistic individuals are in drawing, music, calendar calculation, superior rote-memory, finding shapes within patterns, and precocious reading.
However, in reality, 80% of autistic children are mentally retarded. Of the remaining 20% about two-thirds have normal levels of nonverbal intelligence but do have more significant impairment in their language. By the time they grow up, only about 10% of them have normal intellectual functioning in both verbal and nonverbal abilities. Hence, only a very small fraction of the autistic population meets the criteria of being a savant.
Lastly, Mr Brown raised the issue of the shortage of speech therapists - one of the several professional groups that we are still in urgent need to help our autistic children. Early intervention for autistic children is necessary if we hope to see a better prognosis. Not only do we need more speech therapists, we also require occupational or behavioral therapists trained and qualified in applied behavioral analysis (popularly known as ABA for short) as well as special needs or educational therapists specializing in working with autistic children. It would be most ideal if all the professionals working with the autistic population could come together and work collaboratively in consultation with each other as this could also be one plausible solution to address the shortage of the required professionals.
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