Laura N. Gitlin, PhD and Nancy A. Hodgson, PhD, RN
As a matter of medical ethics, physicians must address the health care needs of and be advocates for family caregivers of their patients with dementia.
Although now discredited, the idea that mothers’ behavior is responsible for autism lives on in the social pressure that mothers feel to save their autistic children, at a cost to both the self-blaming parents and people with autism.
Because many complementary and alternative medicine therapies for autism are based on misguided notions of its cause and lack support from scientifically sound studies, physicians should steer parents away from these practices and toward safe, effective, and evidence-based interventions.
There is evidence that some complementary and alternative treatments improve physiological abnormalities in autism and thus hold promise for improving symptoms.
Drawing Autism, a collection of drawings and paintings by people diagnosed with autism, demonstrates an array of talent and themes as well as providing insight into the artists and autism spectrum disorder.
In treating children with autism, physicians should focus on involving parents in a shared decision making partnership and seeking safe, evidence-based, and medically and cost-effective treatments.