Customer Reviews

Autism and Autistic-Like Conditions in Mental Retardation

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I bought this book, Autism and Autistic-Like Conditions in Mental Retardation, because I am a special education teacher of the profoundly mentally retarded in a public school setting and I wish to better understand the autistic-like behaviors that I see in some of my student population. I was also looking for new methods to help these students.

This book does offer insights into diagnosis and treatment of what this author refers to as Pervasive Developmental Disorders. He has even included a rationale and rating scale for determining the severity of a PDD in the mentally retarded individual.

There is a lengthy section in the book which discusses the behavioral profile differences between the mentally retarded individal with and without Pervasive Developmental Disorders. I tend to agree with his findings because I see similar profiling in my own student population.

There is another lengthy section dealing with the management and treatment of mentally retarded children with PDD. He strongly recommends keeping the child in the home setting with strong collaboration with a team of professionals. However when the problem behaviors are severe enough, he does admit there can be benefits to short term hospitalization to restructure the child's environment and give special training to the parents. He stresses that treatment and care should be provided on a strictly individual basis.

A weakness that I perceived in his treatment section was the lack of profoundly mentally retarded case studies that were sited. Success was documented more often in the cases of the mildly and moderately mentally retarded. When severly physically disabled children or those with epilepsy were sited, the results were less significant.

The author writes that the prognoses as to future developments are significanly more unfavorable for mentally retarded PDD persons than for otherwise comparable non-PDD persons. Based on my own professional experiences, I have to agree.

This book does not supply me with any "miraculous" new treatment options but it does further my overall understanding of the special features of autistic-like behaviors in the mentally retarded.