“West Virginia Schools Face Rising Autism Rates - FOX News” plus 1 more |
| West Virginia Schools Face Rising Autism Rates - FOX News Posted: 08 Oct 2010 04:43 AM PDT CHARLESTON, W.Va. – West Virginia is struggling to cope with a soaring number of students diagnosed with autism, school officials said. The number of autistic students has risen to 1,230 in 2010, from 389 in the 2001-02 school year, state Department of Education official Pat Homberg said. She told the state school board Wednesday that better detection doesn't explain the huge increase. "There has not been a particular cause that has been identified," Homberg said. State figures show the highest number of autistic students live in Berkeley County. Educating them is straining the Eastern Panhandle district's budget, superintendent Manny Arvon said. His district spends an average of $19,000 per autistic student and as much as $200,000 for those sent to a Virginia boarding school. Berkeley County has about 160 students with autism, up from 11 in 1997. Autistic children have far different needs, according to Homburg. For instance, they have little tolerance for frustration and need structured schedules and some need special education teachers and even separate classes. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Siblings of A Child With Autism Often Have Subtler Problems - NPR News Posted: 05 Oct 2010 02:59 AM PDT Children with autism tend to have brothers and sisters with language delays and other, less obvious characteristics of the disorder.  iStockphoto.com Siblings of children diagnosed with autism may benefit for a checkup for related symptoms. That's the conclusion of a study of more than 1,200 families in the Interactive Autism Network, a national online research registry. The finding suggests that the genes behind autism in one child may contribute to less serious problems in that child's siblings, says Dr. John N. Constantino, of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, lead author of the study, which appears in the American Journal of Psychiatry. The study found that in 11 percent of families with a child with autism, a second child had also been diagnosed with the disorder. That's similar to what other studies have found. But the new study also found that 20 percent of siblings who did not have autism had been diagnosed with language delay or speech problems early in life. And about half of those sibling had speech qualities associated with the autism. Those qualities may include a lack of intonation, a failure to emphasize important words, or a staccato delivery of sentences, says Rebecca Landa, director of the Center for Autism and Related Disorders at the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore. The new study is important because it shows how not only autism, but autistic traits can run in families, Landa says. "If you have one child with autism, it's important to monitor any other children from infancy," Landa says. And if there appears to be a problem, the child should get a professional evaluation. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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