On April 2, World Autism Awareness Day was celebrated with a clarion call to expand autism awareness and initiatives as envisaged by the United Nations a decade ago. The entire month of April is devoted to autism awareness.
Joining in was the White House with blue illumination, acknowledging the call extended to President Donald Trump by Autism Speaks co-founder Suzanne Wright, who just died last July, to participate in the event.
Autism Speaks has been a pioneering initiative by Bob and Suzanne Wright, who both decided to reach out to the larger community after their grandson was diagnosed with autism.
Rapidly Growing Developmental Disability
Autism haunts one percent of the world population, according to Centers For Disease Control and Prevention.
In the United States, the prevalence of autism is estimated as 1 in 68 births. Today, more than 3.5 million Americans live with an autism spectrum disorder. In children, autism prevalence increased by 119.4 percent in a decade from 2000 to 2010. Autism has obviously become the rapidly growing developmental disability.
The developmental limitation is marked by slow cognitive development; sensory dysfunctions, such as higher sensitivity to touch, light, sound; speech delay; difficulty in emotional regulation; and hard behavioral expressions leading to undeveloped social skills and motor difficulties.
Events like Awareness Days are a real service to the afflicted community, as they serve as pathways to foster greater acceptance. Acceptance, according to Webster's Dictionary is, "the action or process of being received as adequate or suitable, typically to be admitted into a group."
Wider acceptance, however, involves accepting and assimilating autistic people into all micro and macro social groups such as schools, workplace, home and friend circles.
That process primarily involves accepting autistic people as they are and listening to them. Otherwise, an event like Autism Awareness day will be reduced to mere tokenism and lip service.
Acceptance Through Better Awareness
Autism is a neurological 'disorder' referred to as 'spectrum disorder' because of perceived variations in expression of correlating symptoms that are specific to each person.
The positive part is that awareness about autism is growing and acceptance is also widening toward the neurodiversity of other humans.
According to experts, the key to acceptance of autism is an approach laced with empathy and not treating it as a 'disorder' or 'deficit' compared to rest of the non-autistic population.
Tools Of Acceptance
• Add To The Esteem: Avoid referring people with autism as those facing with "mental disorder". It just leads to stigmatization, shame, and marginalization.
• Avoid Language Of Pathology: The language used in talking about any group shapes their own perception and also of the larger society. Let people take daily steps toward an autistic-friendly world and follow better language conventions and not label an autistic person as "suffering from" autism.
• Dismiss "Normal" Concept: Human diversity is primarily about the diversity of minds. The perfectly "normal" mind is a subjective illusion and acknowledges that there is no "normal" mind. That will enhance the understanding toward diverse groups.
• Legal Protection: Also treat autistic people as a social minority and bestow them with legal protections similar to ethnic minority groups and enforce them strictly. Any abuse of an autistic person must lead to the prosecution of the offender as a hate crime.
Autism Found More Among Males
Autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) are found more among boys, according to studies, which said it must be 4.5 times more than girls. However, some studies have also cast doubts on the gender ratios in ASD.
The National Autistic Society (NAS) in the UK found that only 8 percent of girls have Asperger syndrome, which is autism of a higher order before the age of 6, compared to 25 percent of boys.
Need For Skill Building To Make Life Secure
A new study on autism has underscored the need for skill building to equip autistic people from vulnerabilities and risk.
The research says those diagnosed with autism faces the risk of death from injuries than the rest of the general population.
"We definitely need to prevent that by skill-building, but also by providing either guidance or coaches that will help them learn the skills they need in order to be safe," noted Kathy Seifert, CEO of Eastern Shore Psychological Services.
The study was published by the American Journal of Public Health after a 15-year study that examined over 39 million death records.
It found more than 80 percent of injuries are happening from suffocation, asphyxiation, and drowning. The average life of those with autism was just 36 compared to 72 for the general population.
