Is there a Cure for Autism?

By - 2007-08-23 Find more articles like this in our Autism ADHD and ADD category.

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Autism has been reported to be one of the fastest-growing childhood disorders in the nation. It is a bewildering and mysterious developmental disorder.

It is also reported that it affects one in every 166 children and more than one million individuals; a child is diagnosed with autism every 21 minutes.

So the question on most parents mind of newly-diagnosed children, "Is there a cure for autism?".

Unfortunately, at this point in time there presently is no known cure for autism. However, we're discovering more beneficial ways to understand the condition and aid individuals in coping with the many symptoms of autism.

A few of these symptoms can diminish as some children age and some symptoms have even been known to disappear altogether. With appropriate intervention, many of the autism behaviors can be positively changed, even to the point that the child or adult may appear to no longer have autism. However, the majority of individuals with autism, continue to demonstrate some symptoms of autism to some degree throughout their entire lives.

It was just a couple of generations ago that parents were told by professionals that "There's nothing you can do for your child." Parents frequently heard this hopeless phrase after their children were diagnosed with autism. Many of these children were sent to an institution and never came home again. But alot has changed in those 2 generations. Over the generations we have come to understand autism much better and as we find out more about this disorder, more and more treatments will be available for the autistic community.

Since there are so many behavior combinations which can occur in autism it seems to impact different individuals in various ways. There seems to be no one treatment that is effective in relieving the symptoms of autism, what seems to work well with one person may not be effective with another. . .so it is difficult to predict how a person with autism will develop over a life time.

I believe that we are on the brink of a cure for autism, infact, the organization Cure Autism Now who has committed $35 million for research grants and scientific resources, states on their website that "We believe that a cure will be found for this generation of children with autism."

That is a pretty powerful statement and definitely brings hope to us parents who have children that have been diagnosed with autism.