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Zach Webb English 101 Professor Katie O’Leary 3 November 2009 Autism: An Unnecessary Epidemic There is no denying the need to communicate in contemporary society. Whole websites are designed with this in mind, and many of them have made millions of dollars in just a few years. In fact, if Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube all crashed at one time, there is a high possibility of a revolution from all of the frustrated young people with no way to kill time. Unfortunately, some people are unable to communicate with the world around them at all. These people suffer from autism spectrum disorders, and they remain locked in an emotional box, with thoughts that, in many cases, are borderline genius, yet they have extreme difficulty socializing with and relating to other people. In her book, Autism: an Introduction to Psychological Theory, Francesca Happè explains that “at the present time there is sadly no cure for autism” (109), which means that the millions of people in the world with autism have to just live with the disorder, despite its emotional toll on both the families of autistic people and the autistic people themselves. Although therapy and supportive families and teachers definitely help an autistic child live a semi-normal life, not enough is being done by the government or the insurance and pharmaceutical industries to help those living with autism in America. In order to understand why treatment is necessary for autism and why a cure should be found post haste, one must understand what autism is and why it causes so much of a dilemma for people with the disorder. In a hearing dealing with autism before the Subcommittee on Human Rights and Wellness of the Committee on Government Reform in the House of Representatives of the United States, Chairman of the meeting Dan Burton said, “Once considered a rare disease, effecting roughly 1 in 10,000 children, autism now affects 1.5 million of our nation’s children, and this problem continues to escalate rapidly” (4). Autism is a member of the mental disorders with the fastest growing diagnoses across the world, and the spread of it is certainly a problem in contemporary American society. There is no known cure for it, and no one can quite agree on what causes it, although a combination of genetics and pre-birth or shortly post-birth environmental factors are agreed, at least by most scientists, to be a potential cause. According to Happé, autism has probably been around since humanity has, although it was not officially diagnosed as a disorder until 1943 (7). Autistic people certainly existed before then, but the autism was either higher-functioning and the disorder went unrecognized, or they were simply labeled “retarded, even though many autistic people are able to perform higher-functioning mental tasks than most normal people. In his book Autism and the Myth of the Person Alone, Douglas Biklen explains that “fist-hand accounts of autism have been produced nearly exclusively by people thought to be ‘higher-functioning,’” a term which refers to autistics who are able to converse in normal dialogue (26). These higher-functioning autistics and their recognition that their train of thought does not follow the regular tracks are half of the reason why there came to be so much more known about autism in recent memory. Leo Kanner, the psychologist who gave autism its name, isolated all of the components of autism into two main symptoms: extreme isolation and the insistence on sameness and order in their life (Happé 10). Autistic people have a hard time finding emotional connections in other people. Also, any disruption in the everyday order of an autistic person’s life could greatly upset him or her. Because of their isolation within themselves, autistic people have an extreme difficulty in social situations, partly because they are unable to comprehend that other people have thoughts and feelings of their own and partly because they are unable to successfully communicate many of their own thoughts (Happé 22), even when many of those thoughts are borderline genius in memory or mathematical abilities. Autistic savant Daniel Tammet says in his book, Born on a Blue Day, that “numbers are my language, one I often think and feel in” (7). He is able to do any math calculation in his head, and he has been gifted with the verbal ability to explain his thoughts, along with enough social-awareness to understand that he is one of the only people to think in this manner. Most autistic people either do not comprehend or do not even think about the possibility that other people have thoughts and feelings that differentiate from their own. My twelve year old brother, Maxwell, was diagnosed with autism at the age of three. He exhibits many of the symptoms, such as difficulty in communicating and understanding his emotions and awkwardness in social situations. His abilities with numbers astound many people, as he is able to do almost any multiplication problem in his brain. His memory is immensely detailed, and once he decides to remember something, he will never forget it. He could tell you how many moons each planet in our solar system has and could probably name each and every one; however, he will not hold a conversation for more than ten minutes unless it is about one of his many fascinations, showing signs that he is either unaware of or disinterested in other people’s emotions. My step-mother had to give up her job as an art instructor to take care of him after he was diagnosed, and, in most cases of autism, one parent giving up their career is often necessary to take care of the child. Most parents of autistic children would not put their child in a day-care, as the actions of whoever watches the kids could have a profound impact on the development of autistic children, especially if they are abused or mistreated in any way, or even just feel like they were being ignored. In fact, most day-cares and many school teachers do not have the proper training or understanding to look after a child with autism. Maxwell still goes off on rants about how his third grade teacher took an old glass coke bottle, which he claimed was an antique (although it was not), because he was playing with it in class and she considered it a hazard. He was very upset that day; in fact, my father had to go get him from school because he would not stop crying about the incident. Maxwell began therapy for his autism about two or three years ago and has shown dramatic improvements since. His day does not have to constantly adhere to a rigid schedule as before, although there are still three or four things he feels he absolutely must do, like make sure people around him look around while they are walking to avoid accidents. He hardly ever throws a tantrum over the people at McDonald’s messing up his order, although my stepmother would still have to remove the pickles from his hamburger if they were present. Most importantly, his social abilities have improved to the point where he has a few friends he runs around with in the neighborhood. He is almost a normal child, if a distempered and quirky one. This life-altering therapy costs roughly $900 a month, including medicine. My father and stepmother receive nothing from the insurance company and only $300 from the government every month. My father is not the only person to have to bear the financial burden of taking care of their autistic child with little to no help from the government or insurance industry. Thalia Assuras, in her report for CBS.com titled “Insurance Companies Refuse Autism Coverage,” states that “The total cost of caring for an autistic child can reach a staggering $5 million.” Currently, only seven states in the U.S. have laws that require mandatory coverage for autistic children (Assuras). What this means to the parents of autistic children is that they better have a damn good job or they might as well start buying lottery tickets. There is no reason why insurance companies do not provide coverage for the autistic when they already provide coverage for mental disorders such as Alzheimer’s, Down Syndrome, and ADHD. The needs of an autistic child are certainly less than someone with Alzheimer’s, and, with the right amount of treatment and therapy instead of the cold shoulder thrown their way by the insurance industry, an autistic child could grow up to be a contributing member of society. Unfortunately, most parents of autistic children are unable to meet the staggering costs of such therapy and behavioral treatments without outside help. Insurance companies claim that adding autism to the list of disorders covered would be too expensive for them, as though they do not even consider autism a medical issue. Their refusal in even considering covering autism without the government mandating them just shows the true heartlessness of the insurance companies in general, with every one of them more than likely having a team of people who sifts through potential claims and finds tiny errors so as to prevent the company from having to treat a patient unless absolutely necessary. Their refusal to cover autism is just a symptom of the problem with insurance in contemporary America. They are more focused on making money and fattening their own pockets than caring for sick people in need, even though caring for sick people is the whole reason insurance exists in the first place. It matters not to them how faithfully one has paid his or her premiums all through life. Insurance companies just want to things: a person’s money throughout their life just in case something happens to them, and getting out of paying for that person’s care whenever possible. The government, of course, has done little to prevent the raping of America’s unhealthy by the insurance industry, much less those with autism. The Government Accounting Office’s (GAO) report to the U.S. Senate titled “Federal Autism Activities,” states that the “estimated funding of autism research increased from about $51.5 million in fiscal year 2000 to about $101.6 million in fiscal year 2005” (8). This means a decent amount of research is being done to find better treatment methods and potentially discover a cure for autism, but there are currently no federal mandates requiring insurance companies to help pay for the care of an autistic child. So, even if a cure or a miracle treatment was found, very few of the parents of children suffering from autism would actually be able to afford it. Without a government mandate requiring insurance companies to cover autism spectrum disorders, anything discovered from the research is pretty much irrelevant to the people who have autism and those who care for and about them. For those parents who have children that suffer from autism spectrum disorders, life is full of compromises. They must compromise their careers, time, and effort, all for the care of their child. They even have to compromise with their child, because once an autistic person gets a thought in their head about their daily routine or what they like, it sticks and they have to do it every day. The parents of autistic children are required to act as psychologists, health care workers, and support services while with their child, regardless of whether or not they have any training in any of the above fields. Most of them simply cannot afford necessary treatments and therapies that have been proven to help because of the simple fact that the insurance companies do not want to have to give up any more money than they have to. It is time for America to wake up to both the trials and tribulations of the autistic person and the greediness of an industry that is supposed to be there to take care of people when they need it most.
Works Cited Assuras, Thalia. “Insurance Companies Refuse Autism Coverage.” cbsnews.com. CBS, 9 June 2009. Web 4 Nov. 2009. Biklen, Douglas, et al. Autism and the Myth of the Person Alone. New York: New York University Press, 2005. Print Government Accounting Office report to the U.S. Senate. “Federal Autism Activities.” July 2006. Print. Happé, Francesca. Autism: an Introduction to Psychological Theory. London: UCL, 1994. Print. Hearing before the Committee on Government Reform in the House of Representatives. “Autism Spectrum Disorders: An Update of Federal Government Initiatives and Revolutionary New Treatment of Neuro-Developmental Diseases.” 108th Congress, 2nd session. 6 May 2004. Print Tammet, Daniel. Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant. New York: Free Press, 2006. Print.
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