Autism Spectrum Disorder Road Map For Services And Treatment

The treatment of autism has aroused a lot of questions and controversy in the medical community ever since the disease was first discovered and described about halfway through the last century. This has been largely because there really aren’t any known cures for the condition – even its causes remain an enigma, although various chemical, biological and environmental factors have been identified as potential risk elements that contribute to the incidence of the disease in children all over the world.

What is known about autism is that it is a severe developmental disorder that affects the ability of a child to communicate with people in their environment, making it difficult for them to make friends, share joys, or even experience relationships. The patients often tend to suffer from some kind of mental retardation as well, but there are occasional glimpses of brilliance, intelligence and high IQ that has led people to believe that the disorder might perhaps be a mask for some other kind of extraordinary ability. Without scientific proof, this remains only as speculation, and IQ tests have proven that a greater number of autism patients basically just have average or lower intelligence.

The fact that autism symptoms vary in sufferers and some are actually not even present in many patients with similar symptoms has caused instead for psychologists and psychiatrists to conclude that there are more than one disease that make up the autism spectrum and they are classified as autism spectrum disorders of pervasive developmental disorders. Following this, it has become critical that proper diagnosis be made of the patient before any treatment is administered, because the wrong kind of medication for a sufferer can actually yield adverse results.

There is no such thing as a cure for autism in this present day, but while research is ongoing, various techniques are applied in autism treatment. Mostly, there are only medications that can help the disorder in various ways, especially the symptoms that are sometimes associated with patients suffering from autism spectrum disorders. Many patients are known to have belly pain, constipation, or diarrhea, which may be due to a painful but treatable partial blockage of the large intestine with hard stool, known as encopresis. These have medications that help them.

Serotonin reuptake inhibitors also help to treat compulsive behaviors in autism spectrum disorders. Fluoxetine is one good example of such medications, fluvoxamine is another, and escitalopram is a third, needing to be carefully monitored by a practiced clinician. For irritability in such patients, risperidone is helpful. Recently approved by the FDA, it is the first of its kind, to help extreme anger and frustration, or aggression of the patient towards themselves.

Various training techniques also avail to help with the nonphysical symptoms of autism, such as their learning difficulties, and their inability to concentrate, communicate, or make friends. Autism spectrum disorders can all be helped by various adjustments made to the above treatments and medications. But it is critical to get a proper diagnosis first, to avoid damaging errors.

Autism And Medications – Patented Drugs For Autism Treatment

About the saddest thing that you could realize about autism is the fact that it has no known cure. At one time, in fact, the only way that patients with autism could be taken care of was by having them sequestered in some institution where professionals in the field will care for them.

However, much has changed at this time, and there are lots of things that you could do now in the bid to treat a patient or a loved one suffering from the disorder. You could even raise your autistic child at home by your own self as long as you have the patience with which to handle some of the tough symptoms of the syndrome.

Treating an autistic patient is going to involve a lot of communication tools, the use of individualized education, behavioral management, and then some medication. You must understand that since it is not really a psychosis, medication alone might certainly not do the job.

If you are treating your own autistic child at home, you will have to work on your interpersonal, behavioral, and communication skills so that you can impart the principles of such into the patient. Also, you will have to understand that since you are not the only person in your child’s life, teachers and therapists also will have to work with you to achieve the best results through the treatment.

Medications that are used in the treatment of an autistic patient are few, and they are meant to address a few specific symptoms of the disorder, not so much to cure it. Serotonin reuptake inhibitors for instance are used to treat several of the compulsive behaviors that appear in autism symptoms.

You may have heard of Lexapro, a product of escitalopram; or Prozac, the patented product made from fluoexitine; or fluvoxamine, which is sold in the United States as Luvox. They mostly help to control how much of the neurotransmitter chemical serotonin is reabsorbed into the system of the autistic patient, causing them to exhibit certain unwelcome symptoms.

A lot of these medications cause the autistic patient some side effects such as agitation or aggression, hyperactivity and decreased sleep patterns. As such, you really should not administer them on your own without clinical support.

Perhaps the most reliable autistic medication known today is the recently approved Risperidone. It was approved in the year 2006 by the Food and Drug Administration, FDA, and sold as Risperdal for the treatment of irritability in autistic sufferers. It has the unfortunate side effect of causing a few movement disorders, weight gain, and even the risk of diabetes. But, being the first such of drug that has been approved for the treatment of autistic patients, there is a lot of buzz about it.

Autism And Medications – Learn The Causes And Treatment Of The Condition

Most incurable diseases – save for a few freak exceptions that prove the rule – are that way because their causes are not known. Autism is one such condition, one that has continued to remain a mystery in spite of the wide-ranging researches that are still being carried out in that field. If there is ever to be a cure for the developmental disorder, someone will have to find the cause for it and address a pointed medication that will address not just the symptoms, but precisely the foundation of the disease.

Autism treatment has gone through a few phases with different results that have caused medical professionals to settle for the few that there are. In the meantime, the various potential causes of the syndrome are being explored so that more meaningful treatment procedures for autism can be realized.

There have been misconceptions over time. A renowned psychologist once projected that autism was caused by lack of care or warmth of a parent toward their child at infancy. You must be able to imagine how devastating it must have been to a mother to think she did something that damaging to her own child. Several relationships were greatly challenged by this notion, but with time these beliefs were changed and more was learnt, enough to discard the idea as a bad theory.

One contributing factor to autism that has been confirmed from the results of various experiments is the fact that genetics greatly influence the incidence of the disorder. Tests were carried out using fraternal and then identical twins, and it was found that if one twin had symptoms of autism, the other would too in more than sixty percent of the cases tried with identical twins.

When fraternal twins were tested, it was found that dual incidence of the disorder was only present in both twins about ten percent of the time. As a result, it is certain that children who suffer from autism inherited something from their parents that caused the set of symptoms. Precisely what that thing is, is unknown or unclear.

Some autism theories also have considered brain abnormalities as causes of the disease. Something does have to have gone wrong with the brain to cause the condition, like serotonin reuptake, cerebellar vermis undergrowth, mirror neuron isuess, and such the like. Thoughts and experimentations have also focused on potential chemical and environmental factors like prenatal infections and drugs, which have the potential to have been toxic and passed along to the child through the mother.

There isn’t likely to be a single cause of autism in children; rather a collection of factors that eventually culminate in the set of symptoms that characterize the disorder. In this wise, treatment may have to focus on each of these causes individually for best results. As better understanding is found concerning the disorder, the various causes will be found, and eventually, treatment will be appropriated to help autism sufferers.

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