Hong Yi, a junior high school student who suffers from autism, paints while his mother looks on Sunday. More than 50 paintings by children with autism, including four of Hong’s, were on sale at Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center. Proceeds will be donated to charity.Sun Yuchen
One in 3 lack job experience or higher education, researchers say, based on data gathered before unemployment peaked from the recession. About half a million autistic children will reach adulthood in the next decade.
Associated Press
May 13, 2012, 10:06 p.m.
CHICAGO — One in 3 young adults with autism have no paid job experience or college or technical education nearly seven years after high school graduation, a study finds. That's a poorer showing than those with other disabilities, including the mentally disabled, the researchers said.
With roughly half a million autistic children who will reach adulthood in the next decade, experts say policymakers urgently need to address the issue.
The study was done well before unemployment peaked from the recession. The situation today is tough even for young adults who don't have such limitations.
The study, to be published online Monday in Pediatrics, was based on data from 2007 to 2008. It found that within two years of leaving high school, more than half of those with autism had no job experience or college or technical education.
Things improved as they got older. Yet nearly seven years after high school, 35% of autistic young adults still had no paid employment or education beyond high school.
Those figures compare with 26% of mentally disabled young adults, 7% of young adults with speech and language problems, and 3% of those with learning disabilities.
Those with autism may fare worse because many also have the other disabilities studied.
Government data suggest that 1 in 88 U.S. children have autism and there's evidence that the rate is rising.
The researchers analyzed data from a national study of children receiving special education services, prepared for the U.S. Department of Education. About 2,000 young adults with one of four types of disabilities were involved, including 500 with autism.
It's the largest study to date on the topic and the results "are quite a cause for concern," said lead author Paul Shattuck, an assistant professor at Washington University's Brown School of Social Work in St. Louis.
"There is this wave of young children who have been diagnosed with autism who are aging toward adulthood," he said. "We're kind of setting ourselves up for a scary situation if we don't think about that and how we're going to help these folks and their families." 作者: binfeng2000 时间: 2012-5-19 23:30 标题: re:美国1/3年轻自闭症患者高中毕业7年后仍... 美国1/3年轻自闭症患者高中毕业7年后仍无工作
Some children 'grow out of' autism
22nd January 2013
New research suggests children who are accurately diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder in their early years can sometimes grow out of it.
Some children who were exhibiting classic autistic traits when young had no symptoms to speak of by the time they reached young adulthood.
They were likely to have shown huge improvements during behavioural therapy, but doctors are warning people not to expect such results in all children, and that there is currently no way to predict which children will respond well.
Writing in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, a research team led by Deborah Fein of the University of Connecticut at Storrs reported on the largest study to date of such cases.
Current statistics show that around one in 20 children diagnosed with autism will grow out of their symptoms later in childhood or adolescence.
However, this has generally been put down to misdiagnosis rather than any change in the children's condition. Some experts say the rapid rise in autism cases is due at least in part to over-diagnosis and loose application of the diagnostic criteria.
According to Sally Ozonoff of the MIND Institute at the University of California the study has big implications, because it made it possible to think of recovery from autism without seeming unscientific.
However, she stressed that recovery rates were still very low, and the findings showed the importance of early diagnosis and intervention.
Fein's team found 34 people aged between eight and 21 years old who had been diagnosed with an autism spectrum before the age of five, but who no longer showed any symptoms of autism. Most of them were fairly high-functioning.
They tested their communication and social skills, and interviewed their parents in some cases.
Debates over whether or not it is possible to recover from autism are highly charged, particularly as some treatments claiming to offer cures have been criticised by the autistic community as potentially abusive of autistic people's rights or harmful to their health.
The 34 subjects of Fein's study showed no difference in their performance in standard tests, when compared with a control group who had never had an autism diagnosis.
They also scored far higher than a control group with a diagnosis of high-functioning autism or Asperger's syndrome.
Fein, who co-authored the study with researcher from Queens University in Kingston, Ontario; Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia; the Institute of Living in Hartford; and the Child Mind Institute in New York, said that the tests they employed were widely used in clinical practice.
She said that the children in the study had benefited greatly from behavioural therapy.
But she warned that parents with children on the spectrum should not expect such an outcome for their child, as only a minority appeared able to outgrow their diagnosis.
She said such outcomes were the result of years of hard work by parents and therapists.
Fein said her team now plans to carry out further studies in an attempt to identify behaviour patterns or biological markers contributing to the children's recovery.
According to Fred Volkmar, the director of the Child Study Center at the Yale University School of Medicine, recovery does not always mean a happy or stress-free life, however.
He said the children who are able to live independently as adults in spite of an autism diagnosis frequently suffer from depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts.
21歲的明州青年畫家鄭如翔(Felix Cheng)日前應明州藝術與殘障州立組織(VSA)邀請,在明尼亞波利斯市的愛盲中心(Vision Loss Resources)舉辦第一次個人畫展,展出近兩年的10幅畫作。
鄭如翔個展題材廣泛,從自然風景到動物描繪,色彩鮮明活潑,筆觸大膽。畫展開幕當天有師長、朋友約50人前來參觀。
鄭如翔就讀羅斯斐爾高中(Roseville High School)時,在美術老師克勒克斯(Todd Clercx)指導下,開始學習電腦繪圖軟體、平面設計與用壓克力顏料繪畫。鄭如翔第一幅臨摹世界名畫的作品「運河」(The Canal),結合印象與抽象派畫風,讓老師驚為天才,父母從此鼓勵他畫畫。
高中12年級時,他的兩幅壓克力畫作獲選在哈瑪購物中心(Har Mar Mall)公開展覽。鄭如翔勇於嘗試各種顏料,包括油蠟筆、炭筆與油畫,從14歲開始到現在已累積了28幅畫。最近開始自編劇本與製作電腦動畫。