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For your Saturday afternoon viewing: Autism Neighborhood offers a number of autism-related movies, all viewable online and offering thoughtful,and hopeful, insights about autism. Interviewed are: Stephen Shore, an adult with autism, self-advocate, and author; Larry and Sharon Ceresi, the parents of Ryan Ceresi, who is 10 years old and autistic; faculty of the Yale Child […]
The earlier part of this year saw the publication of a number of studies about the genetics of autism, with one scientist speculating about a unified theory of autism.
The July 2008 Nature Genetics has a review of psychiatric genetics that considers progress and controversy. Here is the abstract:
Several psychiatric disorders — such as bipolar disorder, […]
The autism epidemic commeth — or, more accurately, it goeth. The threat of such a terrible scourge—–lots of children with autism—is behind the calls for “safer vaccines” and “change the schedule!” by anti/pro-safe vaccine rallyers at Wednesday’s Green Our Vaccines (which acronyms nicely into GOV) rally. Get out those toxins, change that schedule, flush […]
Some will remember last week for June 4th and “Green Our Vaccines” rally.
I remember it as Charlie’s last full week of elementary school.
Low Birth Weight and Preterm Birth: Autism Risk Factors?A new study in Pediatrics links low birth weight (less than 5.5 pounds) and preterm birth to an increased risk for autism in infants by […]
Panic disorder and the inability to express emotions (alexithymia) may be related, according to a new study:
In patients with panic disorder (PD), the difficulty to identify and manage emotional experience might contribute to the enduring vulnerability to panic attacks. Such a difficulty might reflect a dysfunction of fronto-temporo-limbic circuits.
Moments of extreme panic—catastrophic thinking, anxiety—-in Charlie […]
A new study has found that burning incense—as in frankincense, the resin from the Boswellia plant—
“activates poorly understood ion channels in the brain to alleviate anxiety or depression. This suggests that an entirely new class of depression and anxiety drugs might be right under our noses anxiety and causes other antidepressant activity in the […]
I never got around to making a list of last week’s top posts last week so here’s two weeks of “top posts” about autism. Rather than arrange them in chronological order, I’ve arranged them by topic:
My son Charlie turned 11 last Thursday, on May 15th. Life on the road with Charlie is my constant theme […]
Sunday’s New York Times had an article about “Mad Pride”: More people with “severe forms of mental illness such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder” are now speaking out about “their demons”:
About 5.7 million Americans over 18 have bipolar disorder, which is classified as a mood disorder, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Another […]
“In psychology, I’m starting to get the weary feeling that everything gives you mental illness,” quips Williams Saletan in the May 7th Slate on Human Nature. Saletan references the recent study which found that parents who have psychiatric disorders are doubly at risk to have an autistic child (while also citing another study according to […]
The decision to put an autistic child on medication is never easy for a parent to think about. When the medications in question are antipsychotics (like Risperdal) and antidepressants (like Zoloft), and when the child is disabled and has little or no language to explain how he feels while on the meds, a parent has […]
Autism mother gets on her soapbox.
Written by Kristina Chew, PhD [email] for b5media.
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