Autism: Epidemic or Not?

The prevalent issue regarding autism epidemic is seemingly a worth controversy that it brings an extensive or large audience to care about the children who’s suffering from autistic. The world of an autistic children are said to be increasing its number per year. While a mother of an autistic child marvels when would the health officials act out to care about the said disorder, claiming a thousands of children afflicted, these current controversy give them hope and faith that someday, somehow, people and health officials will give a prime importance like SARS and can get the same publicity and care in which every mother and autistic children of the world knows that they need it. In 2005, the controversy about the epidemic became widely known, there was a debate in the U.S. concerning between the parents of autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) children and the federal government whether the disorder should be given a wide attention or shall a society will care about its increasing rate. The flow of the debate made an encouraging twist and turn, which in favour to the afflicted children.

The said disorder seem appeared and identified at around 1930’s and since then it has been reported that its increasing in rate, to the extent that in the year of 2002, almost 120,000 autistic children were being held under the Individual with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)- which claimed an increase of 500 percent in the last decade, in the United States. Autism was once specified as rare disorder but as the rate of autistic children rapidly increase, it becomes the most common neurological disorder affecting children. It is a severely debilitating developmental disability that affects many aspects of how a child sees the world and learns from his or her experiences. In 2001, autism was defined by the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academy of Sciences as ” a disorder that is present from birth or very early in development that affects essential human behaviours such as interaction, the ability to communicate ideas and feelings, imagination, and the establishment of relationships with others”. Autism is the result of an abnormality and function of the brain that arise during pregnancy either due to something injures the brain or due to a genetic factor that interferes with typical brain growth. Leo Kanner, an American child psychiatrist was originally described the termed “early infantile autism”. He published a series of studies of eleven children who had a number of peculiar behaviours, but who all showed a marked lack of interest of the people around them. Kanner described it as “early infantile autism” because the disorder seemed to be present from the earliest part of infancy.