The autistic state is characterized by the total retiring of a person into himself and shrinking into his own world.
The reasons of autism, i.e. withdrawal into some virtual reality, are mostly escaping from real problems. One should define an exact problem the person wants to escape from. It can be fear of the changeable society, communication with other people, failure to self-actualize, low or, vice versa, unreasonably high self-esteem, psycho-traumatic situations etc.
Autism: signals to start worrying:
Difficulties in the social sphere: a child is not interested in playing with other children or his family, or in any other interactions.
Communication problems: a child can have speech retardation; he/she is not able to repeat sounds after adults and to respond by smile when someone smiles to him/her. The kid does not show emotions by mimic at the age of over 9 months. Also, the child may not babble at the age of 12 months. He/she does not have common gestures, such as pointing fingers, reaching out for something or for waving. At the age of 1 year the child does not respond when called by his/her name. There can be problems with eye-to-eye contact.
A strange behavior (repeating motions): for example, a child can spin, sway or arrange toys in one line during a long period of time.
Movement disturbances: problems with motion coordination and walking on the tips of toes.
Sensory problems: high sensitivity to noise, music, light, clothes, smells, and bathing.
Digestive problems: diarrhea, constipation, inability to digest some food.
If your child has signs of autism, don’t delay – give your kid a real chance to become a productive member of the society and start treatment and psychological correction right now! The result won’t be late in coming.
Special treatment of autistic patients in the Clinic
Integrated approach. Treatment of autistic children is made complexly and gradually and with obligatory control under the state of CNS applying methods of objectivization, in particular USDG, smart capillaroscopy, EEG; supplement the neurological, psychological, logopedic and pediatric examination.
Individual approach. Infantile autism is a quite popular permanent pathological disorder of mental functions in children. It could reveal itself in various forms and in various levels of the development. Thus, we couldn’t start treatment without integrated individual program.
Development of social relations. Socialization as one of medical factors in the complex treatment of an autistic child is based on basic pedagogical principles – individuality, gradualness, continuity.
Work with parents. Such work plays an extraordinarily role in the therapeutic program for children with autism. It is conducted by a psychologist. The work with parents is made in two directions. First – to teach parents to co-operate with the child taking into account his/her features and to correct psychoemotional state of the parents. The parents of autistic children often do not realise all depth of the problem at slightly expressed autism and can’t manage the situation at strongly expressed.
The Clinic has launched the project called “Healthy child – happy family”, which provides the full-day integrated rehabilitation of little patients based on the individually selected program. Only the everyday cooperative work of parents and doctors can ensure formation of a socialized individual, who is able to self-actualize and, in this way, it enables the family to make prognosis for the future of their child with special needs.
Advantages of the program:
- 1) everyday correction of a child’s condition under control of specialists, including that between therapeutic classes;2) development of self-consistency and self-maintenance skills3) removal of parents’ hypercare of their child;4) parents’ self-fulfillment;5) reaching the conditional final result of rehabilitation;6) adaptation and overcoming the social isolation,7) provision of 50% discount on the price of the integrated examination.
Examples of autistic children’s treatment in the Clinic
Successful treatment of autism.
Patient Oleh, 4 years old
Diagnosis: early infantile autism. Evident mental and speech retardation and moderate kinetic retardation.
Duration of treatment: years 2008–2009.
Treatment method: the integrated individual intensive treatment based on hemodynamic and psychological -pedagogical correction of autistic children and autistic symptoms.
Treatment effectiveness: 80–100%.
Dynamics
On admission to the Clinic:
Logopedist: speech legibility is low; speech is fuzzy and hardly understandable. Vocabulary is poor. The boy often makes mistakes naming surrounding objects. He does not want to work with pictures.
Psychologist: mood is contrast. Attention is instable, with fast switching over. Speech: he names some objects on the adults’ request. The boy named a few real images suggested. He plays alone and tends to stereotypical games with non-playing objects. Visual contact is instable. The child eats, dresses up by himself and acquired some skills of self-maintenance.
Results of the first treatment course:
Logopedist: he uses simple phrases. An active speech is agrammatical and consists of nouns, sometimes verbs and adjectives.
Psychologist: fine motor skills got better, two-hand work coordination is more accurate. Attention rate is stable during 30-35 minutes. The boy accepted the lesson’s structure and does everything he is asked for. His discipline at classes and breaks became better. He is not easy to get first in touch but he agrees to interact with an adult and let the adult play with him and plays the game suggested by this adult. He gives a verbal answer when requested.
Patient Olya, 5 years old
Diagnosis: early infantile autism. Evident mental and speech retardation and moderate kinetic retardation.
Duration of treatment: years 2008-2009
Treatment method: the integrated individual intensive treatment based on hemodynamic and psychological -pedagogical correction of autistic children and autistic symptoms.
Treatment effectiveness: 80–100%.
Dynamics
On admission to the Clinic:
Logopedist: he says some syllables and sometimes simple words but ignores an addressed speech.
Psychologist: visual contact is absent or short. The child imitates simple common actions. He doesn’t use a meaningful speech. The speech comprehension is limited to simple instructions.
Pediatric neurologist: speech disturbance, emotional instability, lack of contact, impatience, low mood, mental retardation, fears, obsessive hand motions, enuresis.
Results of the 4th treatment course:
Logopedist: She says some words and phrases and uses one- and two-member sentences. Active vocabulary became bigger. The child learns to read and describe series of plot pictures and fairy tales.
Psychologist: the girl became more patient. Negativism is observed only 15 minutes before the end of the lesson as a manipulation which disappears if ignored. Sometimes the child is adequate enough. She uses an addressed speech and keeps up short dialogues. Cognitive sphere: formation of arbitrary memory, operations of comparison and generalization. Also the kid was taught reading and counting during the treatment course.
Pediatric neurologist: aural and visual attention became much longer; motor sphere got active; coordination in exercises with and without objects improved; vocabulary of expressive and impressive speech is enriched.
Patient Volodya, 5 years old.
Diagnosis: early infantile autism. Evident mental and speech retardation and moderate kinetic retardation.
Duration of treatment: years 2008-2009
Treatment method: the integrated individual intensive treatment based on hemodynamic and psychological -pedagogical correction of autistic children and autistic symptoms.
Treatment effectiveness: 80–100%.
Dynamics
On admission to the Clinic:
Logopedist: Comprehension of addressed speech is limited. Speaking is on the level of babbling. His speech contains several nouns.
Psychologist: lack of contact and negativism in the form of psychomotor agitation don’t let study the mental sphere.
Pediatric neurologist: speech disturbance, day regimen disturbance, emotional instability, mental retardation, impatience, obsessive motions.
Results of the 4th treatment course:
Logopedist: the boy knows letters, which he uses in his speech – syllables, words, simple sentences. His vocabulary becomes larger and such verbs as ‘walk’, ‘go’, ‘run’, ‘sleep’, ‘eat’ are well learnt. The child accepts verbs in speech only when he plays story games. He does what he is asked and responses to such verbal instructions as ‘Show’, ‘Give’. He can write letters ‘a’, ‘o’, ‘u’.
Psychologist: he begins to collect figures according to a sample and scheme. He learns counting with reference to objects. He recognizes a lot of letters and can match them with a word. The boy uses single-syllable words more often. His results improve if he is praised. He‘s got a stimulus for doing tasks. The child tries to improve results of his writing tasks.
Pediatric neurologist: moderate attention deficit
Patient Said M., 6 years old.
Diagnosis: combined mental disorder associated with secondary autism and hyperkinetic syndrome in the form of speech and mental retardation and moderate motor retardation.
Duration of treatment: years 2008-2009
Treatment method: the integrated individual intensive treatment based on hemodynamic and psychological -pedagogical correction of autistic children and autistic symptoms.
Treatment effectiveness: 80–100%.
Dynamics
On admission to the Clinic:
Logopedist: speech is chaotic, some sounds are slurred. He doesn’t understand an addressed speech.
Psychologist: no chance to examine due to lack of contact.
Results of the 2nd treatment:
Logopedist: vocabulary is enriched by new nouns. The boy can classify thematic pictures according to their purpose (dish, transport, food). He understands what is ‘time of year’ and ‘time of day’ and knows how to combine letters and syllables and write some elements of letters. The kid learns grammatical system of the language. His behavior at the lessons and attention improved.
Psychologist: the boy can long concentrate his attention. He became more curious. The kid can guess an object by its description. The boy got some knowledge about the world around but he rarely shows them. The understanding of instructions improved.