Treatment of Autism Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Treatment of Autism - Research Paper Example It is shown by the fact that identical or monozygotic twins have more chances to get the disease than do the dizygotic twins or the siblings. Conditions affecting the language skills are more prevalent in the family of the patient. Other chromosomal and neurological disorders are also present in the family with autism. Other factors which can also prove causative include; Diet, changes in the digestive tract, metal poisoning specifically with mercury, metabolic disorders in which the body is not able to utilize the vitamins and the minerals and hypersensitivity to some of the vaccines. There are a group of people who are of the view that mercury is a part of some of the multi dose vaccines as thimerosal so in their opinion these vaccines can cause autism but this a misperception as The American Academy of Pediatrics, and The Institute of Medicine (IOM) has agreed to the fact that all the children who are currently diagnosed as autism’s patients, vaccination is not the cause of this disease in a single case even. It should also be considered that the benefits of the vaccination outweighs the disadvantages so vaccination should not be discontinued on account of diseases like autism as most of the vaccines are single dose prescription and thimerosal is not a constituent of any of the single dose vaccine. Treatment: B. F. Skinner who was a psychologist showed that the patients who are diagnosed cases of autism can benefit maximum from participating in Applied Behavior Analysis Training which is also known as ABA training; though there are other treatment strategies also available for the management of autism patients but ABA training proves to be much superior than the other treatment modalities. The cost of using this technique as the treatment modality should be brought into consideration before initiation of the therapy. ABA Training: It is also known as Intensive Behavioral Intervention. There are differences between these two kinds of therapy but most o f the parents as well as layman usually consider both of these as a form of intense treatment plan which primarily includes careful observation and studying the patient usually the affected child and the treatment mainly applies the principles of Operant Conditioning which was1st presented in the theories presented by B. F. Skinner. A study of the children affected by autism was carried out by Ivar Lovaas in 1980’s and it was evident from the results of the study that main principles of ABA can be used in a program designed to treat the patients of autistic disorders. This study showed marked improvement in the patients of autism if these techniques are used in a proper manner. There are many techniques which are currently the part of ABA management system and one of the principle techniques is Discrete Trial Teaching (DTT) which is used extensively nowadays. The main aim of this technique is to maximize the learning process in the affected children and it is useful in the de velopment of most of the skills e.g. cognitive, social, behavioral, fine motor, play as well as it can also be used to accelerate the ability of the children to help them at times. DTT usually involves the fragmentation of the main skill into several sub skills and then each sub skill is taught to the children intensely at a time. In actual practice, repeated sessions are planned with the child and involve prompting and then the prompt is faded to make sure the successful learning of that particular skill by