Autism spectrum disorder and Aspergers

[Apech]

Does anyone have knowledge and/or experience of working with people with ASD?

Edited January 21, 2009 by apepch7

[mewtwo]

Well I have not worked with people with ASD or Apergers specificaly but I have been diagnosed with Aspergers. I will be glad to help in any way I can.

 

Have you tried this place? I is a forum and comunity for people with ASD and Aspergers.

 

http://www.wrongplanet.net/

[Lightbringer]

Regarding what? My friend is a Psych PhD who works with seriously autistic children for a living.

 

I'd be glad to pass on some questions, as I often am curious myself about her job and the human mind.

Edited January 21, 2009 by Lightbringer

[Apech]

Regarding what? My friend is a Psych PhD who works with seriously autistic children for a living.

 

I'd be glad to pass on some questions, as I often am curious myself about her job and the human mind.

 

Well, specifically how it is diagnosed - I have read on the internet but the symptoms not clinically defined as far as I can see. Also I was interested if anyone had used Chinese medeciine, acupuncture or even qi gong to treat it.

 

Ta.

[Todd]

Well, specifically how it is diagnosed - I have read on the internet but the symptoms not clinically defined as far as I can see. Also I was interested if anyone had used Chinese medeciine, acupuncture or even qi gong to treat it.

 

Ta.

 

For one quarter I had 7 year old boy with autism who came weekly for acupuncture. He was seven then. We did mostly scalp needling, since he could move around once the needles were in. Body acupuncture wasn't really possible.

 

He took herbs rather sporadically, partially since it was probably difficult to get him to take them, and because his pediatrician was against them.

 

He was also taking an antipsychotic, and also melatonin to help with sleep.

 

The acupuncture seemed to offer some steady minor benefit (he started saying hello and goodbye to us for example, and his mom said that he was acting violently less often), but nothing dramatic. I don't think that we were able to give him all that Chinese medicine has to offer, especially since we did not give him much in the way of dietary advice, and my supervisors did not have much experience treating these sorts of conditions.

 

There was also another 16 year old boy who was also coming in weekly. I only saw him a couple times. Again, no dramatic improvements.

 

Here is a link to an interesting article on autism treatment from a Chinese Med perspective.

 

There is also this shorter article, dealing mostly with herbal treatment and possible interesections between Chinese and Western concepts.

 

There was also a small research study done in Hong Kong on using tongue acupuncture, which showed some benefit. I don't know how they were able to perform tongue acupuncture on autistic kids without using a lot of force. We had a lot of trouble even getting a look at the tongue of the little boy that we treated.

 

Let me know if you find anything else. I am interested in this topic.

[karen]

See http://www.heilkunst.com/autism/. This has a very high success rate, and that's confirmed by the parents themselves. The kids often lose their diagnosis completely. It removes the underlying causes, rather than the symptoms which are just the effects. It can take some time to work through the removal of the causes, but gains are observed along the way. Adults with autism/asperger's also get good results.

 

I'd highly recommend the book Autism: The Journey Back, which is not only about treatment of autism but about the basic principles of therapeutics that apply to all chronic conditions.

 

-Karen

Edited January 22, 2009 by karen

[Lozen]

I finally bought the book, after all these years!

 

Basic neuroscience indicates that autism is correlated to lack of mirror neurons. But who knows which causes the other.

[karen]

 

That's why it's important to be clear about causation vs correlation.

[markern]

As long as it is not so severe that any sort of communication is more or less impossible I would presume that some sort of yoga would be possible to get them involved in. Qigong might be harder because it is not so obviously physical. As long as you have a certain basis of connection to the world and other people and a bit of self driven motivation to work on the condition there are ways that emphathy (and then in al likelyhood mirror neurons) can be developed. One is working a lot on recognising gross bodylanguage cues and gross facial expressions, the other is working with recognising microexpressions in the face. Paul eckman has developed excellent computerprogramms for training that skill very quickly. Some sort of visualisation of other people experiencing emotions to build emphaty could also do a lot. But again it seems al this is dependent on the condition not being so extreeme as to make such work and a motivation on the part of the person with the syndrom impossible.

 

Some sort of relaxation, easy breathing, and body awarenss exercises could do quite a bit for quality of life and also to build a the self awareness and emotional awarenss that teaches you to understand your own emotions wich in turn is the basis for understanding other peoples emotions. Qigong postures and asanas that are very expressive, for example those mimicing animals, should add an extra benefit by working towards recognising and understand emotions in oneself.

 

Stuff that balances the hemispheres of the brain would presumable be very beneficial. In india children from the age of 5 have often been taught very simple alternate nostril breathing. That is a technique wich realy balances the hemispheres of the brain.

 

Once you have a young adult that has some communication skills there are actualy quite a bit to find in the world of pickup artists thtat has a much broader aplication than just picking up chicks. They have a much better trackrecord of teaching social skills than sosial workers etc. A lot of the realy succesfull pickup artists probably had aspberger or at least were very close to it. The Pickup artist Juggler teaches a style that is very friendly and nice and also very, very aplicable to social interaction in general not just pickup. Some of his coaches would be able to teach someone with very poor interaction skills to be good with people as long as there was some ability to interact to begin with. But, this presumposes both the person being above a certain age and not having too extreeme a condition.

[Apech]

I can find very little on the actual diagnosis of asp. or autism. There must be a fine line between a shy, withdrawn child and a mild case. Lack of social skills and empathy, taking things literally and so on are indicators but many people exhibit those to some degree.

 

I am interested in how someone comes to be confirmed as having one of these conditions. In particular I am thinking about how altered consciousness could look like these conditions. For instance extreme introversion could well be a feature of someone living as a hermit or undergoing some levels of cultivation. Literalness could arise when altered conscious from meditative techniques changes how you see everyday situations. As the 'social' world is all about conventions and protocols for behavior then doing away with these could be a stage in spiritual growth. It is possible that people with these conditions are viewing the world from heightened/altered states - that it is not really a disease at all. Perhaps its simply that they somehow become stuck in one place and loose the flexibilty to adapt to what everyone else expects.

 

What do you think?

[mewtwo]

I can find very little on the actual diagnosis of asp. or autism. There must be a fine line between a shy, withdrawn child and a mild case. Lack of social skills and empathy, taking things literally and so on are indicators but many people exhibit those to some degree.

 

I am interested in how someone comes to be confirmed as having one of these conditions. In particular I am thinking about how altered consciousness could look like these conditions. For instance extreme introversion could well be a feature of someone living as a hermit or undergoing some levels of cultivation. Literalness could arise when altered conscious from meditative techniques changes how you see everyday situations. As the 'social' world is all about conventions and protocols for behavior then doing away with these could be a stage in spiritual growth. It is possible that people with these conditions are viewing the world from heightened/altered states - that it is not really a disease at all. Perhaps its simply that they somehow become stuck in one place and loose the flexibilty to adapt to what everyone else expects.

 

What do you think?

 

 

 

 

 

 

That is a very interesting idea. I really like that idea.

 

As for diagnosis this is more for an IEP Individualized Eduaction Plan there are these series of tests that they give you they are called the W.I.A.T. test.

 

I am not sure but I think they give you a test related to the DSM I could be wrong on that one though.

[karen]

Excellent questions.

 

The allopathic disease label game is false, to begin with. What is the criteria for distinguishing between ADD and ADHD, or any of the other zillion arbitrary categories? It's medicine by consensus, not real science. There has to be a real basis for any diagnostic entity, but all there is in conventional medicine are labels based on groupings of symptoms, and which groupings and which symptoms to decide to give a label to and call a disease, is arbitrary. There might just as well be a separate disease category for a pounding headache vs. a throbbing headache, and on and on.

 

Then we try to fit people into these arbitrary categories, and it doesn't work. Instead, we need to look to the real meaning of diagnosis - dia-gnosis, "seeing through" to the underlying cause. Autism in that sense isn't a disease at all - it's just a description of a set of symptoms. Symptoms are the effects of disease, not the cause. So if one preson's autism is caused by vaccines, and another person's autism is caused by an inherited predisposition or emotional traumas (in reality there are usually multiple causes), can we say that both people have the same disease? No - they have the same appearance of symptoms, the same condition, but different actual diseases causing that condition. And so they require different treatment that targets each specific disease.

 

Now, about whether there are underlying diseases at all or whether the so-called condition is just an altered state. I think it's both. You don't even have to know whether it's autism or not in order to treat the underlying diseases - whatever diseases are there can be identified and treated, and then the symptoms that they gave rise to, begin to disappear.

 

Autism is about a disintegration of the self- a split between the conscious, rational self and the subconscious, instinctual self. When the person can't hold the polarity together, it's not a natural state of consciousness. The person can be highly creative and express traits that are highly advanced in some ways, breaking out of the conventional material mindset. But they're not free - they're locked in the split. With other kinds of altered states of consciousness, you can ask the same question - is the person entering into this state of consciousness in freedom, or are the experiences happening TO them? That's a barometer of health.

 

The autistic kids are in a spiritual struggle for integration of the true self, and I think that's why they seem to be showing us something archetypal. Many of us are engaging in a similar spiritual struggle. The book Autism: The Journey Back discusses all this and goes into the spiritual meaning of disease. In this sense, disease isn't something to just be rid of, but to extract the hidden spiritual purpose.

 

-Karen

[Apech]

 

 

Autism is about a disintegration of the self- a split between the conscious, rational self and the subconscious, instinctual self. When the person can't hold the polarity together, it's not a natural state of consciousness. The person can be highly creative and express traits that are highly advanced in some ways, breaking out of the conventional material mindset. But they're not free - they're locked in the split. With other kinds of altered states of consciousness, you can ask the same question - is the person entering into this state of consciousness in freedom, or are the experiences happening TO them? That's a barometer of health.

 

The autistic kids are in a spiritual struggle for integration of the true self, and I think that's why they seem to be showing us something archetypal. Many of us are engaging in a similar spiritual struggle. The book Autism: The Journey Back discusses all this and goes into the spiritual meaning of disease. In this sense, disease isn't something to just be rid of, but to extract the hidden spiritual purpose.

 

-Karen

 

Not free indeed - but then none of us are free.

 

I like the idea of it being a spiritual struggle for integration - because that (I presume) is what we all are doing (those of us on here for instance).

 

 

That is a very interesting idea. I really like that idea.

 

As for diagnosis this is more for an IEP Individualized Eduaction Plan there are these series of tests that they give you they are called the W.I.A.T. test.

 

I am not sure but I think they give you a test related to the DSM I could be wrong on that one though.

 

 

Thanks I'll look up these tests - I am unfamiliar with the terminology though.

[Apech]

Found these online:

 

WIAT test

 

http://alpha.fdu.edu/psychology/WIATII_descrp.htm

 

DSM

 

http://similarminds.com/personality_disorder.html

 

took the second test - the result was a little unnerving