What Is Autism? | Autism Video Lecture | Understanding and Treating Autism - Health & Fitness

what is autism autism is a
neurodevelopmental disorder that is
behaviorally described it is seen in
children and it starts early in life the
issue is in three areas being involved
which is your social communication
disorders speech and language not just
delayed language but disordered language
or a typical language development and
then the area is of restricted
repetitive behaviors and play and these
are the three criteria that have been
used in the dsm for the new
classification which is now the dsm-5
really focuses on two areas which is the
disordered social communication and the
repetitive play or perseverate of play
and stereotyped is etc so this is a
newer classification but there are many
other areas that we see with children
beyond the exact DSM diagnosis a lot of
kids have sensory issues they can be
oversensitive to sound and texture or
under sensitive there's kids who have
savant skills very gifted parents come
in excited these kids are reading by two
and three years of age and actually
these can have a photographic memory or
just repeating things and have what we
call echolalia repeating words or
scripting which is knowing a dialogue
from a book or a movie verbatim so many
of these unusual things are also seen in
children with what we call now the
autism spectrum disorder and medical
issues is another area that we can talk
about but basically it's important to
understand the behavioral disorder
involved and making the diagnosis so the
term autism was first coined by dr. Leo
Khanna in the 40s and he described
children with these particular
difficulties as I mentioned with
communication with speech and with
separative
play and particular interests but over
the years we have the naming has changed
from childhood schizophrenia to
psychosis to pervasive developmental
disorders and that is
is commonly used as well but the current
language is autism spectrum disorders
because it is a matter of degree of
involvement and I think that's very
important to understand that we are
labeling the children we're looking at
symptoms and we're trying to define them
because it becomes important for
diagnosis as well as to provide services
I don't want anybody to be just called
or this child is autistic I want the
child to be remembered for who they are
having particular symptoms that we have
labeled as having an autism spectrum
disorder