USA

Ronit Molko, Ph.D., BCBA-D

Elopement, or wandering, as it is often called, is an important safety issue for individuals with autism or other disabilities, their families, and communities. This term describes the tendency for an individual to leave the safety of a known environment and caregiver. That might mean leaving the home when no one is looking or running away from school.

Read more about Wandering Off: Understand Elopement In Autistic Individuals

What makes a successful autism treatment depends on whom you ask. A researcher may judge a treatment based on the results of a clinical trial or on the outcome measure chosen. For an autistic person, the best measure of success might be an improvement in quality of life. To others, no ‘treatment’ makes sense for autism’s core features.

To get a glimpse of such disparate perspectives, we asked three researchers and two autistic people to tell us what a successful autism therapy looks like to them.

The Experts:

Read more about What defines ‘success’ for autism treatments?

This is a snippet from my book, All Across the Spectrum, that you can pre-order here.

Read more about A balanced view on ABA therapy, by an autistic adult

Sara Luterman

When I was 4 or 5 years old, my parents told me there was no Santa Claus. As a child who attended a Jewish parochial school, this didn’t come as a shock. But at the mall one day, I became incensed on behalf of children lining up to sit on the lap of a man who wasn’t who he claimed to be.

Read more about Why adults need an easier path to autism diagnosis

John Elder Robison

Some institutions can restrain people against their will. Should it be allowed?

Restraint is emerging as a hot-button topic among autistic self-advocates and some parents.

People on both sides feel their position is obviously correct: Restraint leads to abuse, and should be banned; or restraint is necessary for the safety of some people, and those who deny it are crazy or idealistic.

Read more about Restraint of People with Autism and Developmental Disability

Jonathan Alexander and Rebecca Black

In one Harry Potter fan fiction story, Hermione Granger anxiously awaits the results from a recent test.

It isn’t her performance on an exam in a potions course that she’s concerned about. Instead, the higher-ups at Hogwarts had ordered she undergo some psychological tests. They had noticed how quickly she talked, along with her nervous tics.

Read more about With a limited on-screen presence, autistic characters have emerged in another medium: fan fiction

Abstract

Read more about Are Children Severely Affected by Autism Spectrum Disorder Underrepresented in Treatment Studies? An Analysis of the Literature

By Brittany Shoot

One in every 40 children in the United States could have autism or an autism spectrum disorder (ASD), according to a new article published in the journal Pediatrics.

By contrast, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) puts the estimate at one in 59 children having ASD nationwide.

The true number of children with autism in the U.S. may be somewhere in the middle. And the reason for that discrepancy may have to do with how the data was collected. The study published in Pediatrics relied on numbers from the 2016 National Survey of Children’s Health, which is based on reporting from 50,000 parents of children ages 17 and under.