Why Is It so Difficult to Diagnose and Treat Autism?

While everyone has negative emotions, autism is a real disorder.And it can cause a host of problems for an individual’s health and family.

So what exactly is autism?Does autism have anything to do with negative emotions?

Autism isn’t something you can get just because you want it

Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder that develops in infancy and early childhood and is about three to four times more common in boys than in girls, with symptoms generally more severe in girls.

Symptoms of people with autism are mainly language development disorders, interpersonal disorders and stereotyped behaviors.

People with autism don’t have the means (rather than don’t want to) to communicate with their family or the friends around them, and it’s not simply a matter of a language barrier, it’s a matter of the fact that they don’t change the way they behave to suit the demands of their environment.They live in their own world and have their own unique reactions to people and things around them.They cannot understand us, and there is no way we can understand them.

Because people don’t understand autistic children, and because a small percentage of autistic people score high on IQ tests, many people romanticize autistic children, calling them “children from the star,” believing that autistic children are geniuses that people can’t understand, or that they have some kind of “genius ability.

In the 1988 movie Rain Man, starring Tom Cruise, the main character, Raymond, is an autistic man who has a superhuman memory and is able to forget everything he sees, and he wins a lot of money in a casino with this skill.Many family members of autistic people don’t like the character portrayed in the movie. The character reinforces the stereotype of autism, which is not conducive to a proper understanding of the disease.And a correct understanding of the disease is the prerequisite for acceptance, inclusion, intervention, and treatment.

In fact, the vast majority of autistic children are not gifted at all, and it is rare to find a “gifted” autistic person. I am deeply skeptical of the claim that Albert Einstein was autistic.Most autistic children are incapable of self-care and independent behavior.Misunderstandings and perceptions of autism also delay timely treatment and intervention to some extent.

What exactly are the causes of autism?

There is no scientific consensus on the causes of autism.Genetic causes may explain some of it, such as a higher prevalence of autism in children of older mothers, and a higher prevalence in the immediate siblings of autistic children.Children born after taking certain medications during pregnancy or having a viral infection have a higher prevalence of autism.But no single cause explains all or even most cases.It may be because autism is a spectrum disorder, which is an umbrella term for a range of similar symptoms of varying degrees of severity.For example, in the case of a social disorder, the symptoms are so severe that you can’t understand what is being said and can’t communicate with others.Slightly less severe, can understand the language itself, but can not feel the emotions contained in the language, such as everyone is familiar with and favorite “Big Bang Theory” Shelton.As for whether Sheldon is autistic or not, that would need to be scored by an authoritative scale to know.

Autism is characterized by language developmental disorders, interpersonal disorders, and stereotypical behaviors, and the severity of each symptom varies from person to person, with some individuals with atypical autism having only one or two of these three symptoms.Autism is a spectrum disorder that encompasses a myriad of unique individuals with different symptoms, so it is not surprising that the causes of the disorder vary.

Identification of Autism

Because autism is a spectrum disorder, the diagnosis of autism is usually made using scores based on behavior and presentation.The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR), developed by the American Psychiatric Association, contains the most common diagnostic criteria for autism, which provides a detailed breakdown of social disorders, interpersonal disorders, and stereotyped behaviors.However, because the behavioral criteria in this manual are based on Western behavior, many scholars in China are in the process of Chineseizing the criteria according to the behavioral habits and parenting styles of Chinese people.Other scales used to diagnose autism include the Autism Diagnostic Observation Scale (ADOS) and the Checklist for Autism in Toddlers (CHAT), neither of which is perfect.A very small number of children are diagnosed by different doctors and may get different results.But this is a good thing; it shows that the symptoms are mild, which makes behavioral interventions much easier.

Autism Prevention and Treatment

Because the symptoms and causes of autism are so varied and complex, no common medical cause has yet been identified in autistic people, which makes the development of autism-specific medications extraordinarily difficult.In other words, we don’t know enough about autism.

We don’t know what’s going on in the bodies of people with autism, we don’t know what, where, or what the target of autism looks like, and we don’t know what to design drugs against.Because ideal animal models of autism are difficult to construct, it is also extremely difficult to design clinical trials for autism.These factors have led to the fact that there are currently no drugs that can effectively treat autism.

There are several principles that should be followed in the treatment of autism, the most important of which is “early detection and treatment”.Current research has found that the younger the age of treatment, the more obvious the improvement of symptoms.That’s why it’s important for parents to keep a close eye on their children during their early childhood and seek medical attention as soon as they notice long-term symptoms of autism.

Since there are no unique medications, the only thing parents can do for their children is to make behavioral interventions, talk with their children more often, have close contact with them, and train them to take care of themselves, and to be patient and persistent when communicating with their children.Similarly, the limited behavioral interventions currently available are all designed in the United States, and there is still a long way to go to form a unified treatment plan after “Sinicization,” which is also questionable.

So, for the time being, the diagnosis and treatment of autism is still difficult for us.But the reassuring point is that for some patients, as they grow older, the symptoms of autism will decrease or even disappear, although we still don’t know why, but this is a little bit of light in the darkness, isn’t it?