This is one of four talks from the IMFAR 2012 symposium Anxiety in Autism Spectrum Disorders: From Biology to Treatment. The overall session theme: It’s clear that anxiety is a major problem for kids and adults on the autism spectrum, now we need to figure out how to treat it. This summary is not intended nor should be taken as medical advice. Please consult a medical doctor for any decisions regarding psychopharmaceuticals. Any errors or omissions in the edited-down transcription below are on me. Dr. Scahill also presented data and slides from several studies, that information has either been summarized or omitted. INSAR members can download the full audio file of Dr. Scahill’s talk. -SR —- Lawrence Scahill School of Medicine, Yale University There are so few data on this topic that he actually had to change the talk. The story starts in 2002, with a study in the New…
Tag: meds
Jennifer Byde Myers www.jennyalice.com Jack is asleep in my bed right now. He wandered in while I was folding clothes; I pulled back the covers and asked if he wanted to snuggle. He’s non-verbal, but he made a happy sound I know to be yes, and from across the room he leapt in, buried his head under the pillows, and fell back asleep as I returned to my unmatched socks. It’s hard to believe that he’s the same boy who as a three-year-old didn’t sleep for 52 days. Fifty-Two days where he didn’t rest longer than twenty-thirty minutes in a row and no more than one to two hours in a 24-hour period. Back then he would scream and thrash the entire time between passing out. It’s an example — the worst one — of what we call “episodes,” what appeared to be pain from unknown source, and it happened…