Autism Is Still Evolving And Becoming More Prevalent All Across The World

The Case of Temple Grandin paints a picture of a young woman’s determination and hard work while struggling with autism during a time when the disorder was unknown. This case discusses Grandin’s challenges, early diagnosis, growth and development in school, and support from her mother. Temple Grandin could not speak like the other children at the age of two, so because doctors could not find any physical issues she had been subsequently labeled as brain-damaged. To communicate with others, she would throw tantrums and scream. She could speak by three and a half years old with the help of speech therapy. A few years later at the age of five, Grandin was diagnosed with autism so her mother worked with her 30

Temple Grandin’s autobiographical book, Thinking in Pictures, opened the door that revealed the true aspects of autism. The author, who is an autistic woman, portrayed autism not as a complicated developmental disorder but as a unique characteristic that is a compliment to society. To break apart from society’s stereotype on autistic individuals, Temple focused her book on issues such as how her disorder was initially misdiagnosed, her issues with learning acceptable behavior and social cues, her connection with animal minds, sensory sensitivities, and explored the possible treatments with medication.

The article “Autism Is a Serious Public Health Crisis” is presented in manner intended to generate a shock reaction in its selective audience. It does this by using scare tactics and repetitious trigger words such as lies, epidemic and crisis. Though this piece is intended to be informative about the autism crisis and the author’s perception of the truth behind its cause, the argument ultimately is one based in ignorance and heavily driven by pathos.

In the past two decades or so, autism has changed from being a condition nobody had even heard about to widely recognized mental health condition. Due to widespread use of internet, social media and smartphones everybody knows something about autism. Just searching for autism in Google brings up more than 68 million results. Autism has become a matter of passionate national debate among different stake holders such as government, public health agencies, mental health associations, non-profit organizations, parents of autistic people and public in general. After the Affordable Care Act was signed into a law in 2010, there has been a renewed interest in autism with different groups wanting to include mandatory coverage for autism in the health insurance plans. The Affordable Care Act provides health care services to more Americans and access to preventive services at no additional cost which includes screening for autism for children at ages 18 and 24 months. After the Affordable Care Act, health insurance companies/plans cannot limit or deny coverage to anyone due to any pre-existing health conditions. 1

Viewing this documentary, opinions of this individual with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) did, in fact, change the opinion of who they are. ASD can start from when they were born to a mature adult. This film presented lessons on how families and the individuals have gone through a daily lifestyle. One lesson that shown in the movie is that they understand going on however it may take the time to process through their brains.

Since 2000, the prevalence of autism has increased by nearly 120 percent: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), this makes autism the fastest-growing developmental disability in the U.S. http://www.autism-society.org/what-is/facts-and-statistics/ A March 27, 2014 announcement http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2014/p0327-autism-spectrum-disorder.html from the CDC states that autism impacts 1 in 68 children across the nation.

The movie entitled Temple Grandin featured the life of an autistic girl and the experiences she had from when she was so distant to others until she learned to cope up and became a better individual. She has autism which, according to Ernspberger, refers to “neurologic disorders involving serious impairment of abilities to interact and communicate socially, and repetitive and restricted interests and activities” (3). The purpose of this film is to let us see the life of an autistic person and feel what it is like to be her. Temple had struggles in life because of her gender and disability. People around her thought that she’s weird.

Temple is not shy about trying to explain what autism is like. She conveys the best she can to the reader as to what it is like to live with autism, the good and the bad. Her life experiences are her ways of helping us understand her side of things. The author even uses a Harry Potter reference to help the young readers connect to how Temple is feeling. Harry Potter was the odd one out when his peers learned of his abilities, but once he got to Hogwarts and fit in with others having the same abilities, he was much happier and confident which allowed him to grow into a new

Autism affects people in a lot of different ways. Autism is the fastest growing disorder in the U.S.There is no cure for this disorder but there is treatment. Autism costs a family about $60,000 in one year on average. Symptoms of ASD can have different ranges depending on the person’s. Communication for an Autistic person is extremely difficult, so ASD people don’t even speak, they use hand signals or gestures. Peoples with ASD have a difficult time in social settings, they tend to have outburst or become reclusive depending on the situation. Some ASD people require only 2-4 hours of sleep on a regular basis while others can go for up to 72 hours of no sleep, there has been few but some who can stay awake for weeks at a time. The reason for this is because ASD people’s brains don’t sleep, They never get into a full deep rem sleep because the activities in their brain continue to function on overload. Studies show that 1 in every 3 boys have some type of ASD spectrum, boys are more likely to test as ASD spectrum.

The movie that I will be critically examining to illustrate the neurodevelopmental disorder called Autism is Rain Man. I feel this movie is a perfect example of a popular film that depicts certain characteristics that are outlined in the DSM-V criteria. In the movie Rain Man (Levinson, Marrow & Bass, 1988), two brothers embark upon a journey of connecting with one another. In this classic film, Charlie (Tom Cruise) learns for the first time of his brother Raymond (Dustin Hoffman) who is “an institutionalized autistic savant who is the beneficiary of their father’s fortune” (Rain Man: The Journey of Charlie, 2014). Charlie therefore kidnaps Raymond in hopes to obtain half of his father’s estate.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex developmental disability; signs typically appear during early childhood and affect a person’s ability to communicate, and interact with others. In the film Temple Grandin, she was born Autistic. Temple only began to speak at the age of four. She used her autism, the ability to think in pictures, to her advantage and expounded issues that are invisible to a neurotypical person. She is now a world-renowned doctor of animal science, an activist for autistic people, and a professor at Colorado State University.

Autism is a developmental disability that presents at an early age (typically under the age of three years) that can affect a child’s educational performance. Child and adults can have deficiencies in communication, social skills, and using language. People with autism tend to engage in motor/vocal stereotypy. The spectrum for autism has a wide range from mild to severe. To determine where a child falls on the spectrum many assessments can be administered.

At the present moment there are no medications that alleviate the core symptoms of autism. However for children who are aggressive, self harming, hyperactive and engage in repetitive behaviours there are two medications that have been found to be effective; risperidone and aripiprazole. One of these medications could then be prescribed to reduce the engagement in repetitive behaviours since the boy does not exhibit any other symptoms. However this is only for a short period of time until the other therapies can be started. After all, there is a huge risk in taking these medications which is the possible development of diabetes .

I watched the movie “Temple Grandin,” which is a beautiful, honest, and delicate movie that depicts a wonderful story of a girl growing up with autism. I feel that the writers and producers of this movie did a real good job in portraying Temple in this autistic role that shows how she is able to live with the choices that she makes through the years. She accomplished her growth and success through the love of her family, her remarkable talent, intelligence, and the confidence she grew in to. The message portrayed by the movie from the producers and writers wasn’t to spread a very simple idea about what autism was instead the films focus was “different, not less.”

The number of kids being diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder has increased exponentially in the last 40 years. The increase of autism from 1 in 5000 in 1975 to 1 in 68 in 2012 can only be seen as an meteoric rise on an epidemic scale(cite). The source of this spike in diagnoses is fiercely debated among clinicians, scientists and the general public. The scientific community is split on whether the cause of the increase is a result of a new diagnostic system or new unfounded environmental influences. They believe more environmental stimuli like pollutants, vaccines, drugs and genetically modified foods play a larger role in the increase of autism spectrum disorder. Most researchers still attribute the rise to a better understanding of the