If you look at a group of children on a playground chances are at least one of them will have autism. One in every one hundred and fifty children are diagnosed with it and boys are four times as more likely to have it than girls. so what exactly is autism?
According to Dr. Desmond Kelly who works with autistic children at Greenville Hospital System's Children's Hospital, "Autism is a neuro-developmental disorder and children with the disorder share features of impairment in communication, in social skills and relatedness and repeat behaviors or restricted interest."
He says autism is a health crisis and right now doctors are struggling to find out what causes it.
"We know that there is a very strong genetic component and it is likely that there is some other trigger either environmental, social, something that happens that triggers the condition in children that have that vulnerability."
What he worries about is people getting steered in the wrong direction.
"Naturally there are many theories out there. I think the one I worry about is the vaccines causing autism and there have been numerous studies that have not supported that."
Not only does Dr. Kelly say there is no known cause, but the disorder is hard to diagnose because there's no scan or blood test that can give us an answer.
"Really the diagnosis relies on observing behaviors."
He says there are certain signs they look for in the first two years of a child's life.
"Is the child developing the languages we expect are they babbling by a year are they using single words by 16-18 months are they combining words at two years are they pointing?"
Dr. Kelly says he believes one day the mystery of autism will be unraveled, but until then while there's no known cause and no cure the best we can do is try to understand the different world these children live in.
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