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=Latest News about Disabilities= = [|From P.S. 176X, kids with autism get joyful launch] - CNN July 2, 2009 = All parents have hopes and dreams for their children. Parents of kids with serious disabilities are no different. But in their moments of wildest imagination**,** the parents of Vicki Martinez, Chase Ferguson and Travis Cardona could not have envisioned high school graduation -- certainly not in the dark days when they first learned their children had autism.

But last month, in a spacious high school auditorium in the Bronx, New York, Vicki, Chase and Travis marched down the aisle to "Pomp and Circumstance," resplendent in their caps and gowns, along with 15 classmates at P.S. 176X, a New York City public school with 560 students ranging in age from 3 to 21, all of whom have autism.

P.S. 176X is the largest school for children with [|**autism**] in New York City and very likely the largest in the country, if not the world. Because it is so big, explains principal Rima Ritholtz, it can offer an extraordinary range of services: chorus, band, arts, life skills and cooking classes, vocational training at school and in the community, as well as a wide range of academic programs aligned to the wide-ranging abilities and disabilities of the students.

The school operates within five school buildings: three elementary schools, a middle school and high school. P.S. 176X students have full-spectrum autism, not milder forms. About 10 percent of the students attend regular classes at those schools, with an aide to help them, but 90 percent are in special classes, with student-teacher ratios as small as 1-to-1 and as large as eight students with two aides and one teacher.

Nationally, there is much debate over how best to educate the nation's rapidly growing and diverse population of youngsters with autism, the prevalence of which has increased tenfold over the past 25 years. The quality of services offered by public schools varies enormously from place to place. Some parents relocate to school districts that offer good autism services. Some persuade or even sue their district to pay for private school placement, which can cost $70,000 a year or more.

=[|A Genetic Link Between Anorexia and Autism?] (TIME) - June 19, 2009= By Maia Szalavitz Researchers at the Eating Disorders Unit at the Maudsley Hospital in London have been studying the commonalities between these Anorexia and Autism for several years. On the surface, they appear entirely different — in autism, patients have difficulty connecting with people in the outside world, while in anorexia, sufferers seem consumed by other people's perceptions — but Maudsley researchers point out that the salient characteristics of each illness are similar. For example, both anorexic and autistic patients have a tendency to behave obsessively and suffer from rigid ways of thinking. Tic disorders, which commonly affect people with autism, are found in 27% of people with severe anorexia. And in both conditions, patients have difficulty with "set-shifting," or changing course mentally. In addition, says Janet Treasure, director of the Maudsley Eating Disorders Unit, past research suggests that about 15% to 20% of patients with anorexia may also have Asperger's syndrome, an autism-spectrum disorder. Research also shows that the conditions occur together in families more often than they would by chance. It's possible, she says, that the same genetic predisposition for autism and anorexia may be expressed differently depending on gender. "Both autism-spectrum conditions and anorexia share a narrow focus of attention, a resistance to change and excellent attention to detail," says Simon Baron-Cohen, director of the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge University, who is not involved in the Maudsley research.

About 15 times as many boys are given a diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome as are girls, and nearly 10 times as many girls develop anorexia as boys. It's easy to see how an outsized sense of perfectionism in a female might lead to an unhealthy obsession with thinness — given society's preoccupation with physical appearance — while a male might end up obsessing about cars or trains, which is typical in autistic boys. "The reason [Asperger's] is usually diagnosed less often in females may be because it takes a different form — anorexia may be just one of the forms," says Baron-Cohen, adding that there are likely multiple routes leading to anorexia and that autistic features may not factor in all of them. Treasure has found that starvation itself intensifies autistic characteristics like rigidity and obsession — a phenomenon that applies to all people, but particularly those with anorexia. "When they are underweight, people with anorexia get even more like people with autism," says Treasure. "They can't interpret other people's emotions, they can't regulate their own emotions, and they get overwhelmed when they are frightened or angry." In fact, in a study published this month in the journal //Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy,// Treasure and colleagues found that underweight anorexics performed poorly on a classic test of understanding others' emotions that was devised by Baron-Cohen to study such defects in people with autism-spectrum disorders. The theory is that hunger focuses the brain so sharply on the task of getting food that, as with other stressors, it shuts down higher cognitive functions, like reading other people's emotions. =[|Study links some ADHD medications to rare deaths] (CNN) - June 15, 2009= By Amanda MacMilla

After years of speculation and rare case reports, a study suggests that stimulant medication -- mostly used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder -- may have played a role in a handful of cases of sudden, unexplained death in children and adolescents.The study authors stress, however, that parents and doctors should not refrain from treating children with ADHD just because of these results.

"The association is significant in that it's real, but that doesn't mean it's not a very low risk," says lead author Madelyn S. Gould, Ph.D., a professor of psychiatry and public health at Columbia University, in New York. "There probably does need to be more careful monitoring, but the bottom line is that parents should not take their children off stimulant medication they're currently on and should not be scared to have their child go on a stimulant if that's what they and their doctors decide is the best thing for their child."

The study, published this week in the American Journal of Psychiatry, is the first to suggest that the stimulants may pose a risk -- albeit remote -- in children without underlying heart problems. About 2.5 million children in the United States take such medications. =[|Mothers' talk is key to kids' social skills, study says] (CNN) - May 15, 2009= By Elizabeth Landau Research from the United Kingdom shows that the way mothers talk to their children at a young age influences their social skills later in childhood. The study, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, found that children whose mothers often talked to them about people's feelings, beliefs, wants and intentions developed better social understanding than children whose mothers did not. In the first part of the study, mothers were asked to talk to their 3-year-old children about a series of pictures depicting scenes such as a child coming out of school looking happy and people waiting in line. Children whose mothers talked about the mental state of characters in the picture tended to perform better on social understanding tasks, the researchers found. =[|Opera helps visually impaired kids find their voice] (CNN) - May 28, 2009= All of the actors in the Pumpkin Pickle Pop Cookies Opera are visually impaired 4- and 5-year-olds. Two are blind, and the others have varying degrees of sight. All are students in Atlanta's Center for the Visually Impaired BEGIN (Babies Early Growth Intervention Network) program, was started in 1985 and has about 95 children go through the program each year.

Anne McComiskey, director of the program, says the program works with newborns up to 5-year-olds. It helps parents understand what is possible for their visually impaired or blind children. "First of all, we are teaching the parents how to teach their child," she said. "Because some 90-odd percent of learning comes through your vision, we have to teach mommy and daddy how to do what they would do typically, a little differently."

Jacqueline Howard, the center's music therapist, came up with the idea for the opera while talking with some of the teachers. "If you have a visual challenge, you want to be safe in the space you're in, because you may not be able to see everything around you. So we learned to move, sing and play instruments at the same time, which is a challenge for anyone!"

McComiskey says that that is one of the goals of the program: to instill a sense of "I can" in the kids. In this case, all 10 students seem to have taken that lesson to heart. All of them will be attending mainstream kindergartens in their school districts next fall. "That is most unusual, for a child that is blind or visually impaired to go right into a typical kindergarten," McComiskey said.

[|Thomas the Tank Engine helps autistic kids identify emotions] (CNN) - May 27, 2009
The steam locomotive and his friends are the stars of a new game in Australia, designed to help autistic children recognize emotions. Autism Spectrum Australia (Aspect), a nonprofit that provides services to people diagnosed with the developmental disorder, unveiled the game on its Web site Tuesday. The game asks players to recognize which engine has a sad face, or which is happy or angry.

Children with [|**autism**] often have a difficult time distinguishing different facial expressions. Each time a child plays the [|**game**], he/she is presented with a different sequence of emotions. In doing so, the game takes advantage of the single-mindedness of autistic children to assist in their development.

=[|4 in 10 College Kids are Depressed, Hopeless] AP, WASHINGTON, May 21, 2009= Pressure about grades, student loans, relationships and school work take a toll on college students, finds a new Associated Press-mtvU poll. More than 42 percent of those surveyed at 40 colleges said they had felt down, depressed or hopeless several days during the past two weeks, and 13 percent showed signs of being at risk for at least mild depression, based on the students' answers to a series of questions that medical practitioners use to diagnose depressive illness. Few have gotten professional help, the new poll of students age 18-24 finds. =[|Study suggests kids can ‘recover’ from autism] CHICAGO, May 8, 2009=

Leo Lytel was diagnosed with [|autism] as a toddler. But by age 9 he had overcome the disorder. His progress is part of a growing body of research that suggests at least 10 percent of children with autism can “recover” from it — most of them after undergoing years of intensive behavioral therapy.

Skeptics question the phenomenon, but University of Connecticut psychology professor Deborah Fein is among those convinced it’s real. She presented research this week at an autism conference in Chicago that included 20 children who, according to rigorous analysis, got a correct diagnosis but years later were no longer considered [|autistic].

The study, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, involves children ages 9 to 18.

Autism researcher Geraldine Dawson, chief science officer of the advocacy group Autism Speaks, called Fein’s research a breakthrough. “Even though a number of us out in the clinical field have seen kids who appear to recover,” it has never been documented as thoroughly as Fein’s work, Dawson said. =Kids with ADHD on meds test better than peers CHICAGO - April 27, 2009=

Children on medicine for attention deficit disorder scored higher on academic tests than their unmedicated peers in the first large, long-term study suggesting this kind of benefit from the widely used drugs.

The nationally representative study involved nearly 600 children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder followed from kindergarten through fifth grade. Children's scores on several standardized math and reading tests taken during those years were examined. Compared with unmedicated kids, average scores for medicated children were almost three points higher in math and more than five points higher in reading. The difference amounts to about three months ahead in reading and two months in math, the researchers said.

Both groups had lower scores on average than a separate group of children without ADHD. The researchers acknowledged that gap but said the benefits for medicated youngsters were still notable.

"We're not trying to say in this study that [|medication] is the only answer," but the results suggest benefits that parents, educators and policy-makers shouldn't ignore, said Richard Scheffler, the lead author and professor at the University of California at Berkeley's School of Public Health.

The researchers agreed that other treatment ADHD children often receive — including behavior therapy and tutoring — can help, but the study didn't look at those measures. =[|"Horse Boy" and his family find respite from autism in Mongolia] (CNN) - April 24, 2009=

Little 3-year-old Rowan, was becoming unreachable. The Austin, Texas, family had been struggling with Rowan, who has autism. His wild tantrums were nearly driving his parents to divorce. "He would just stare off into space," said his father, Rupert Isaacson. "I was worried it was going to get progressively worse and that eventually, he might float away from us entirely. Luckily, right about that time is when he met Betsy."

Isaacson, who had trained horses for a living, began riding Betsy, a neighbor's horse, with Rowan. He says he noticed immediate improvement in his son's language skills. "He would start to answer. He would start to talk. We would do song games up there on the saddle. I would take books up there in the saddle," Isaacson said. After about three weeks on Betsy, Isaacson says, Rowan's improved behavior was translating into the home and outside world as well. But not consistently.

In late 2004, Isaacson, a human rights activist, brought a delegation of African bushmen from Botswana to the United Nations. Among the men were traditional healers, who offered to work with Rowan. For about four days while they were with him, he started to lose some of his symptoms. He started to point, which was a milestone he hadn't achieved," Isaacson said. When the tribal healers left, Rowan regressed.

Isaacson says he couldn't help but wonder what would happen if he were to give Rowan a longer exposure to the two things that he seemed to have responded well to: horses and shamans. So Isaacson took his wife and son to [|Mongolia] to ride across the steppe and visit traditional healers. While trekking across the Mongolian prairie on horseback, Isaacson says, Rowan's behavior was changed dramatically. "Rowan was not cured of autism out there," Isaacson stressed. Rowan came back without three key dysfunctions that he had: incontinency, neurological firestorms/tantruming all the time, and cut off from his peers, unable to make friends.” Isaacson credits Rowan's improvement to horses, time in nature, and to shamanic healing, which he says he simply can't explain rationally.

His parents never abandoned more orthodox treatments for his autism, including applied behavioral therapy. "He's just becoming a very functional autistic person," Isaacson said. Isaacson has written a book, "The Horse Boy," about Rowan's autism. As far as the Isaacson family's journey took them, it is the same hard slog facing millions of families gripped by autism. You don't have to get on a horse -- or plane to Siberia -- for relief. For autism families, Isaacson encourages parents to simply follow their instincts and listen to what their child shows them. =[|Experts Ponder link between Creativity, Mood Disorders] (CNN) - April 2, 2009= The works of David Foster Wallace, who committed suicide September 12, are famous for their obsessively observed detail and emotional nuance. Certain characteristics of his prose -- hypersensitivity and constant rumination, or persistent contemplation -- reflect a pattern of temperament that some psychology researchers say connects mental illness, especially bipolar disorder and depression, with creativity. There have been more than 20 studies that suggest an increased rate of bipolar and depressive illnesses in highly creative people, says Kay Redfield Jamison, professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University and author of the "An Unquiet Mind," a memoir of living with bipolar disorder. Experts say mental illness does not necessarily cause creativity, nor does creativity necessarily contribute to mental illness, but a certain ruminating personality type may contribute to both mental health issues and art. "Unquestionably, I think a major link is to the underlying temperaments of both [|**bipolar**] illness and depression, of reflectiveness and so forth," Jamison said. This theory could help explain why eminent artists throughout history, from composer Robert Schumann to poet Sylvia Plath to Wallace -- suffered mood disorders.

Sensitivity to one's surroundings is also associated with both creativity and depression, according to some experts. Creative people in the arts must develop a deep sensitivity to their surroundings -- colors, sounds, and emotions, says Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, professor of psychology and management at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California. Such hypersensitivity can lead people to worry about things that other people don't worry about as much, he said, and can lead to depression. "The arts are more dangerous [than other professions] because they require sensitivity to a large extent," he said. "If you go too far you can pay a price -- you can be too sensitive to live in this world." =[|Colorful way to better Autistic Kid's Social Skills] SAN FRANCISCO - March 31, 2009=

Karrie Karahalios can show a child with Asperger's Syndrome when he's lost in a conversational riff or a taciturn spouse when he doesn't speak very much. Their voice appears on a computer terminal as vibrant colors — red, yellow, blue, green — the image growing in size if the voice gets louder, overlapping another color as it interrupts or abruptly narrowing with silence.

Karahalios, a MIT-trained professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has devised a way to digitize conversations and spit them back as images that let people "see" their own conversations on computer monitors in real time, allowing people to adjust their speech in the same way they adjust their appearance before a mirror.

The colors linger so people can see the progression of an entire conversation, not only the present moment. The computer program, which she calls a "conversation clock," has been tested with low-functioning [|autistic] children and in marriage counseling. It is being prepared for use people with Asperger's Syndrome, a disorder at the high end of the [|autism] spectrum, who often have sophisticated vocabularies but troubled social interactions. =[|Suicidal Behavior May Run in Families] (CNN) - March 24, 2009= By Elizabeth Landau The poet Sylvia Plath, who made a name for herself through prose and poetry that conveyed a sense of depression and suicidal tendencies, famously died by asphyxiating herself in an oven in 1963. The recent reported suicide of her son, marine biologist Nicholas Hughes, brings to light a known psychiatric phenomenon: the heredity of suicidal behavior. A first-degree relative -- a parent, sibling or child -- of a person who has committed suicide is four to six times more likely to attempt or complete a suicide, said Dr. David Brent, psychiatrist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Studies on twins have shown that suicidal behavior is between 30 and 50 percent due to heritable factors, he said. Suicide victims' biological relatives who were adopted away also show an increased risk of suicide, he said. The rate of suicide in America is 10.9 suicide deaths per 100,000 people, according to the latest information from the National Institute of Mental Health. That means, although the likelihood of suicidal behavior increases in families, a completed suicide is still a rare event, Brent said =[|Brain with ADHD Develops Differently] (CNN) - December 9, 2008= A National Institutes of Health study from November 2007 found that in youth with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, the brain matures in a normal pattern. However, it is delayed three years in some regions, on average, compared with youth without the disorder. The researchers used a new image analysis technique that allowed them to pinpoint the thinning and thickening of sites in the cortex of the brains of hundreds of children and teens with and without the disorder. The findings bolster the idea that ADHD results from a delay in the maturation of the cortex.