March Madness: Autism
People with autism aren’t insane, although the popular belief is that they are. I’m including autism in our month-long look at madness just because so many people are under the impression that autistic people are insane or psychotic.
This is because they can have several problems in communicating with others or that they have the mental capacity of an infant. Once you get to know a person with autism, there tends to be a kind of logic in the things that they do that at first seem crazy, such as flapping their arms, walking in tight circles or rocking constantly. (Actually, rocking constantly can get very soothing, no matter if you’re autistic or not.)
If you don’t know anyone with autism, it can be really hard to understand what they are going through so you can communicate with them. I’d be lying if I said I knew. Here’s a little film about why some austic people react the way they do — because of stress. Appropriately, the background soundtrack is Queen/David Bowie’s “Under Pressure”:
Autism is generally diagnosed by the time a child is 5. But some children show signs of being autistic when they are a year old. Here’s a little film about some of the usual signs of autism in very young children. Try to ignore the tinkling piano in the back:
Sometimes, autism seems to be a strange form of blessing rather than an affliction. Some autistic children and adults have been able to perform complex mathematical calculation in their heads, been able to do incredible drawings or have grown up to be Bill Gates. In this film, an autistic adult shows a photographic memory:
Leave a Reply