With your help, I hope to build a large collection of profiles on individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a condition ranging from non-verbal low-functioning autism all the way to Asperger's syndrome, which isn't always obvious.
My younger brother has classic, low-functioning autism. He's also been diagnosed with epilepsy, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and retardation, among other things. He has learned to communicate, but only in a handful short, preset phrases. He's been loaded up on prescription drugs since he was a kid, and it's proving extremely difficult to get him off them.
According to all the self-diagnostic material I can find, I have Asperger's syndrome. In college, I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and given Effexor and then Lexapro, but that was no good. All in all, my problems are manageable without drugs. I can blend in with the rest of society fairly well; it just takes extra effort.
But enough about me. If you or someone you love has autism or Asperger's syndrome, I'd like to hear from you. Please try to answer the following questions as accurately as you can. Email your responses to "jones@vokation.com", and I'll make a new post about you or your loved one as soon as I get a chance.
1) Are you answering these questions for a loved one with autism? If so, what is your relationship with him or her? Please provide your name(s) and location(s) in as much detail as you feel comfortable with. A photo or two would be greatly appreciated!
2) Please define autism as concisely as you can. No dictionaries please; I'm looking for your understanding of the word. What would you like the world to know about autism?
For the remaining questions, I will use the phrase "the individual" to refer to the individual with ASD, whether this is you or a loved one.3) When was the individual born, and when (approximately) was he or she diagnosed with autism or Asperger's syndrome? Have there been any other diagnoses? Do you believe the disorder was triggered by something in particular?
4) Please describe the social and/or linguistic skills of the individual.
5) What sort of therapies have you tried? Has the individual improved over time? If so, how? Please describe any medications and their effects as best you can recall.
6) What are some of the individual's biggest difficulties today?
7) Has the individual made any special achievements you'd like to mention?
8) What have you learned from your experience with autism? Have you formed a philosophy or taken away any life lessons?
3 comments:
Good luck getting this blog started, you're doing a good thing.
I'm curious as to what the latest thinking is on the relationship between vaccinations for very young children—we're talking two-year-olds here—and the inducement of autism. I read somewhere that while most children’s bodies possess the genes or the antibodies that will enable them to fight off the multitudinous vaccinations, perhaps one child in a hundred does not so possess and, thus, falls victim to artificially-induced autism.
(The son of a friend of mine is one of those. He was a perfectly happy, healthy and normal child until he was vaccinated—and within two or three days he developed autism, from which he continues to suffer.)
Is it the mercury in the vaccinations that causes this? The excessive number of vaccinations? Certain types of serum but not others? What do the experts—and preferably those who do not work for Big Pharma—have to say about this?
For anyone with the same questions as "Anonymous", click on the "vaccines" tag in the "Post Topics" cloud at the top of this page. More questions than answers, really, but at least I'm not involved with the drug industry. Or the drug trade. But I repeat myself.
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If you'd like to submit a profile, please read my first post and send your reply to "jones@vokation.com".