Autism: Then and Now

Wednesday will be World Autism Day. I have been working with children with Autism since the late 80's. In the early 90's, I bought my first PC and got online. In those early days, you had to belong to an online community like AOL, Compuserve or Delphi. Though the internet was in existence, it was several more years before the first browser (Mosaic, as I recall) became available to the public. I had an account with Delphi, which was completely text based- no graphics. During that time I searched for anything I could find about Autism. There wasn't much. There was the National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD) database which is still available here. It's rather ironic that Autism is still listed in NORD's database today in that it is not exactly rare anymore. Current statistics indicate that 1 in 150 individuals is diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) making it more prevalant than pediatric Cancer, Diabetes, and AIDS combined, according to AutismSpeaks.org. Back then, as I recall, the incidence was 1 in 15,000.

So, 20 years later, the Autism community has grown immensely, and of course, has a huge presence on (what is now) the internet. I have friends whose kids were diagnosed in that time frame who had difficulty getting resources about Autism. One, in particular, actually ordered, read, and then (I think) destroyed "The Empty Fortress" by Bruno Bettleheim which did not exactly paint a rosy picture of what kind of future awaited their family. The prognosis for treating children with Autism is significantly different now.

Just as is true in the treatment of children with ASD, we in the Autism community have come a long way, but even still have a long way to go.

I still love working with this population and have loved it since I started twenty years ago. Since tomorrow begins Autism awareness month, I will be posting frequently about Autism related issues.