The Tragic and Cruel Past of Autism Treatment
The Tragic and Cruel Past of Autism Treatment
Given the prevalence of autism in modern society, the very brief known history of the disorder is astonishing.
In 1911, Swiss physician Eugen Bleuler initially used the term autism to describe adult schizophrenia. It took another 30 years or more before autism was essentially defined as it is now. During his five-year study of eleven toddlers who began to isolate themselves from others at about the age of one, Dr. Leo Kanner of Johns Hopkins University coined the phrase in 1943.
Curiously, a German scientist by the name of Hans Asperger also discovered a comparable illness about the same time; nowadays, this is known as Asperger's Syndrome.
There was a widespread belief after Kanner and Asperger's findings that parents of autistic children did not provide them the "normal" amount of love and care.
Moving on in our autism timeline, it should be noted that for almost 20 years, up until the 1960s, the disorder was mistakenly thought to be a kind of schizophrenia. Additionally, many parents felt responsible for their child's autism because of the widespread misconceptions about the disorder.
A widespread Freudian notion had emerged: a child will not develop to their full potential if they do not establish specific fundamental psychological links with their parents. In the 1950s and 1960s, this theory of autism was popular, even though there were two clear alternatives that the Freudian theory completely disregarded. Firstly, that parents who were seen to have little contact with their child were probably just experiencing the symptoms of autism, not the cause. Secondly, that autism was a severe form of a mildly inherited personality trait.
During this time, some kids were removed from their homes and placed in foster care in the hopes that they would "recover"—it's very clear from what we know now that this technique didn't work. Autism was not fully understood or treated by the medical profession until the 1960s, when a few signs were finally identified.
Regrettably, experimental treatments for autism were tried from the 1960s to the 1970s and involved the use of pain and punishment to bring about behavioral changes, in addition to drugs like LSD and electric shock. This was commonplace less than half a century ago; clearly, we've gone a long way from those dark days.
In the end, the most effective methods for treating autism and disorders associated with it emerged in the 1980s and 1990s: highly structured learning environments and non-violent behavior therapy.
Behavior therapy is the actual bedrock of autism treatment in the modern day, with other treatments added based on the requirements and severity of each patient's disease.
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