Goal For The Green

Yes, it’s Autism Awareness Month,and Autism Awareness day was April 15, last week.

In this post I am including the most current information and stats on the condition, that is gaining more awareness, daily.

Since my post last year entitled Autism In the News, the topic is still one of controversy, and alarming statistics.

The thing about Autism that I find most baffling, is the odds of autism, and it’s occurrence. Currently, the odds of autism are 1:110 children affected here in the U.S, and 1:88 in the UK, or perhaps lower,just in this last year. The odds of autism, just a year ago were 1:150 children affected.  These new statistics imply, that a new case of autism, is diagnosed every 20 minutes or less, somewhere in the United States. Read the rest of this entry »

By now you’ve probably heard the comments made last week by radio talk show host Michael Savage. He caused outrage across the nation about his comments on autism, stating that it is a “racket” and a “fraud. Here is the video in case you missed it.

Unless you have a child with autism, or are a caregiver that works with this population, you just can’t know the tremendous amount of time, love and devotion that is necessary to deal with this disorder 24/7. While I don’t at all agree with Mr. Savages comments about autistic children being “brats” or ” idiots”, he certainly caused a furor that bought too much attention to him, and an even greater awareness of how huge autism is. At About.com is an article from a different perspective on what Mr. Savage may have done for autism.

Read about that here.

When it come to autism, it is doubtful that it is misdiagnosed, under diagnosed, or over diagnosed. The truth is that 1 out of every 150 children are diagnosed with some form of the disorder. These are pretty alarming statistics for a disorder that varies so greatly in its severity, and has no cure.  Or society has been led to believe by the medical community and pharmaceutical companies, that there is a pill for everything. Well, there is no “magic” pill for autism. With this thought in mind, it is possible that many people, adults and children alike are over medicated, no matter what their ailment  or diagnosis is.