This website is for parents of students with autism and other learning disabilities who honor their child with their incredible strength, courage and unrelenting fortitude. Behind the success of a child with a disability, lies a parent who continues to have a vision that is fueled by a passion to make a difference in the life of his or her child.
Billions of dollars are spent each year to millions of students who receive special education services. Yet, because learners with autism present with unique challenges, their educational needs continue to elude the most caring parents and experienced teachers. Students are not learning and parents are concerned about not doing enough or about making the right decisions.
Aspiring Minds helps you gather the essential pieces of the educational puzzle. Our experience spans both research and clinical practice and garnered the trust of parents and the respect of school districts with whom we continue to work closely and collaboratively.
We: * Help you secure the right educational programs for your child. * Attend IEP meetings. * Observe your child in the classroom and make program adjustments. * Help you ensure that your child's placement is appropriate. * Help you make informed decisions about your child's needs. * Provide independent evaluations (Speech and language, educational, and psychological, etc.)
Britain Bans Dr. Andrew Wakefield, Who Linked Autism To Vaccine
By Maria Cheng, AP tinyurl.com/2w5gfcm A doctor who persuaded millions of parents worldwide that a common vaccine could cause autism was barred from practicing medicine in his native Britain on Monday after the country's top medical group found he conducted his research unethically.
Dr. Andrew Wakefield was the first researcher to publish a peer-reviewed study suggesting a connection between autism and the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella. That prompted legions of parents to abandon the vaccine in moves that epidemiologists feared could lead to outbreaks of the potentially deadly diseases. Vaccination rates in Britain and other rich countries have not fully recovered since Wakefield and his colleagues' research was published in 1998 and there are measles outbreaks across Europe every year. There are also sporadic outbreaks of the disease in the U.S. His study in the medical journal Lancet was widely discredited, however, after Britain's medical regulator found it did not meet ethical standards; other studies found no link; and a British journalist revealed Wakefield had been paid by lawyers of parents who suspected their children were harmed by the vaccine.
Wakefield, 53, moved to the U.S. in 2004 and set up an autism center in Texas, where he gained a wide following despite not being licensed as a doctor there, and faced similar skepticism from the medical community. He quit earlier this year.
Britain's General Medical Council was acting Monday on a January ruling that said Wakefield and two other doctors acted unethically and showed a "callous disregard" for the children in their study. The medical body said Wakefield took blood samples from children at his son's birthday party, paying them 5 pounds (today worth $7.20) each and later joked about the incident. The council, which licenses and oversees doctors, found him guilty of serious professional misconduct and stripped him of his right to practice medicine in the U.K. Wakefield said he plans to appeal the ruling, which takes effect within 28 days. The investigation focused on how Wakefield and colleagues carried out their research, not on the science behind it. Wakefield said in January that the medical council’s investigation was an effort to “discredit and silence” him to shield the government from exposure on the (measles) vaccine scandal.
DSM-5: The Future of Psychiatric Diagnosis, February 10, 2010.
Publication of the fifth edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) in May 2013 will mark one the most anticipated events in the mental health field. As part of the development process, the preliminary draft revisions to the current diagnostic criteria for psychiatric diagnoses are now available for public review and comment.
Asperger's according to the American Psychiatric Association, Asperger's syndrome will not be listed as a separate diagnosis because it is part of the continuum referred to as Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Having autism is the anchoring disorder in this diagnostic category (Klin, McPartland, Volkmar, 2005) although it has been used to refer to individuals with milder forms of autism marked by higher cognitive and linguistic abilities and more socially motivated but nevertheless socially vulnerable adolescents and adults (Klin, et. al., 2005)
Today, autism is presumably the developmental disorder with the best empirically based, cross-national diagnostic criteria (Volkmar, Klin, 2005). However, in contrast with autism, the definition of autistic like conditions remain in need of further clarification. It has always been anticipated that further studies would improve the definitions of these conditions and that new disorders would be delineated within the broad and heterogeneous class of PDD and that others would be regrouped.
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Autism New Jersey - 28th Annual Conference
Autism New Jersey, 's 28th Annual Conference will be held in October, 2010 in Atlantic City.
Autism New Jersey's Annual Conference is one of the nation's largest autism-related conferences, drawing record crowds of parents and professionals. Last year the conference attracted more than 1,400 attendees.
