How is Autism Diagnosed? | Autism Video Lecture | Understanding and Treating Autism - Health & Fitness

so how do we diagnose a child with an
autism spectrum disorder first concerns
are raised by parents and they often
come to their primary pediatrician with
a concern for example of delayed speech
or the child is not responding to their
name or not having enough eye contact if
for example your pediatrician for some
reason minimizes your concern and says
let's do the wait-and-see game and I
will follow this you know this child
does not have enough symptoms to them
for me to have concern a parent can also
reach out to early intervention and look
for the end go to other resources in
their community to get more screening
done and I think screening is an
important thing because it's being done
now at 18 months and 24 months that is
the recommendation by the American
Academy so that is something that you
know your child will get but if you have
concerns before that absolutely reach
out earlier and be persistent with your
concern because there's diagnosis that
can be done
definitely by 2 years of age we are able
to also diagnose children earlier and a
lot of the diagnose diagnosis not is not
only done by pediatricians but can be
done by psychologists through the early
intervention program and you can
initiate that yourself
they are standardized tools that are
used for diagnosing autism per se and
they can be parent questionnaires as
well as observational and evaluations
and a lot of it is done by psychologists
but pediatricians neurologists
psychiatrists can do the diagnosis based
off the diagnostic Statistical Manual
the dsm-5 and it can be a really a
diagnosis based on behavioral criteria
you may have a child getting more
formalized testing done including a
cycle educational testing which also
gives you a level of severity and that
is one of the requirements now with the
dsm-5 and it's important to get a team
evaluation much that you may have one
physician or one psychologist
make the diagnosis
there are other areas that also need to
be evaluated whether they have sensory
issues or fine motor delays or gross
motor delays for example so doing a
multidisciplinary evaluation is
important to make a comprehensive
diagnosis