Newsfeed > Autism Awareness Month: A Highlight from the NCP Archive
As April is recognized as Autism Awareness Month, we look back into the NCP Archive to a typed draft of a study, “Considerations of the Development and Treatment of Autistic Childhood Psychosis”, written by a psychiatrist and supervising psychologist treating children at an east coast in-patient psychiatric hospital.
Below is an excerpt from the study, which was subsequently published in the Psychoanalytic Study of the Child in 1961:
It reads:
In order to develop the impetus for a change in the child's orientation to other persons it is essential to induce an intense sense of helpless dependence, similar to that assumed to be present in normal infants at the time of "imprinting" on humans. Although electro-shock or insulin coma can induce a state of extreme dependency, the effects are quite transitory. Such operations, however, as well as psychopharmacological aids could play some role in the overall program.
This primary source material offers a glimpse of what treatment of autism and psychosis looked like at some institutions in the mid-20th century. The study details the treatment of four children (all male), and references terms and treatments such as “psychotogenic mother,” "electroshock," and "insulin-coma." Contemporary approaches to treatment and what is understood with regard to autism’s etiology have certainly changed since the above study was written. Given NCP's specialized and depth-centered approach to treatment, and our impactful work thus far in the community, how might we collectively move forward to further influence and improve access to care for children living with autism?