Right, typing this post haste from the new medical library (Ooooooh!! It's lovely!! This is the first time I've been in a PROPER medical library and it's all gone to my head, just ask my husband when I raced home and pronounced that I'd diagnosed myself with obsessive compulsive disorder after just one reading of the DMV IV!!!!
Yeah, such a skeptic am I.....
)
Okay, Eos:
DMV IV - when I have more time, I bet the DMV V could be found online with a nice link; one of the other students doing the unit I'm doing said it existed but I left my notebook in the classroom. Sorry, on lunch break.
Page 73 of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision (DSM IV TR).
"Prevalance - the median rate of Autistic Disorder in epidemiological studies is 5 cases per 10,000 individuals, with reported rates ranging from 2 to 20 cases per 10,000 individuals. It remains unclear whether the higher reported rates reflect differences in methodology or an increased frequency of the condition."
Additional info you may like....
My lecturer, who is a Special Needs consultant for the West Australian Catholic Education Office and has autism as her focus of her PhD, says that 'rates of reported autism has increased 600% whereas across cultures worldwide rates of immunisation has declined." Therefore causal links between the two are, to her, 'nonsensical'. But we agree that a lot of rubbish is believed by people sometimes (ahem, like me getting a hold of the DMV and getting convinced I have .... never mind.....
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She believes that some brain trauma during the early months of childhood may contribute to autism... she has one case she discussed in class where a child nearly drowned at a young age and she suspects this may be a contributing factor. The DMV IV says that "the condition is sometimes observed in association with neurological or other general medical conditions such as fragile X syndrome, tuberous sclerosis" (page 72).
"Various nonspecific neurological symptoms or signs may be noted in AD; ..... there are group differences in some measures of serotonergic activity but these are not diagnostic for AD. Imaging studies may be abnormal in some cases but no specific patter has been clearly identified. EEG abnormalities are common even the absence of seizure disorders." (again, page 72 of the DMV IV).
She also adds that she considers that there are 'probably' some genetic succeptibility involved with those people who have a reaction to immunisation, but would naturally suggest further research on this be done.
