Psychopathology / Abnormal Psychology

Abnormal Psychology: Infantile Autism
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Autism is a psychological disorder that in children and mostly it appears at the infancy stage. Children or infants who are victims of this disorder usually have the following characteristics of learning the language, being creative or able to imagine things and social interactions. Children living with autism have a problem socializing with others, they have a communication problem and there are those who remain silent all the time.
Recent research shows that the reports spreading on TV screens and magazines that infantile autism is becoming an epidemic are mare fiction. The reports show that one in one hundred and sixty-six children suffers from autism. The research was done by some earlier researchers have shown that the proportion of children suffering from autism at one is to two thousand five hundred. The two reports have a wide variations gap which makes everybody doubt the truth of this statement that there has been a massive epidemic of infantile autism. For example in the United States, between the year 1993 and 2003 statistics show that the autism rates increased by 657% a figure which is not realistic (Volkmar & Chawarska 2008. These alarming figures have led several institutions and researchers to refer autism as a national epidemic that requires immediate intervention to identify its causes and the most favorable solution. However, some representatives like Dan Burton doubted this report and in 2001 he asked what was wrong? By asking this he meant that the rise of the epidemic was alarming and everybody was now required to come in and help discover the cause of that rise.

Declaring infantile autism as a massive epidemic is fiction that was contributed by the following factors: First the Vaccines are given to children after two years, coincidentally the symptoms of autism begin to show shortly after the child attains two years not so long after children or infants have finished receiving the vaccinations to protect them from several diseases. It’s for this reason that many parents later claim that their children developed autism after receiving the vaccinations. These vaccinations are usually meant to protect the children from measles, Rubella, and mumps. Secondly, a change of the criteria used to diagnose autism could have resulted in the increased cases of autism (Zwaigenbaum et al.,2009 ). The criteria used to diagnose autism has changed and loosened in a great manner hence, any substantially mildly afflicted individual is labeled as autistic. Thirdly, there is an increase of swapped diagnosis: in two different studies support the assertions that the massive autism epidemic might be more of a fiction than a reality. In 2005 Suniti Chakrabarti and Eric Fombone who both psychiatrists carried an investigation in which they involved a huge population of people to enable them to capture the extent of autism between 1992 and 1998, they used ten thousand children as a sample. In their report, there was no change in prevalence and suggested that other researchers should use the same criteria when checking autism and the number of diagnosis doesn’t change (Volkmar & Chawarska 2008).
It’s not possible to completely ignore the possibility that infantile autism is on the rise, however, it is almost untrue that the epidemic is growing massively as some people suggest. The claims for massive infantile autism are extraordinary therefore the evidence to prove that should also be extraordinary to convince the researchers who have facts. In conclusion, the claims that Autism is becoming a massive epidemic are a mere fiction and not based on facts. Several factors have contributed to such conclusions; such factors are not factual in any way.

References
Volkmar, F. R., & Chawarska, K. (2008). Autism in infants: an update. World Psychiatry, 7(1), 19-21.
Zwaigenbaum, L., Bryson, S., Lord, C., Rogers, S., Carter, A., Carver, L. & Fein, D. (2009). Clinical assessment and management of toddlers with suspected autism spectrum disorder: insights from studies of high-risk infants. Pediatrics, 123(5), 1383-1391.