Autism and How It Has Changed My Life

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Autism and how it has changed my life I write this paper not only because I’m interested in this topic but also because this topic has a personal meaning to me. Autism has had a huge impact on my life since I was a child and probably for the rest of my life. My brother is autistic and his disability has not just pushed me to do better for myself, but to also find out as much information about the disorder that I can. I will first discuss the history of autism, the different types of autism, and how it has impacted my life. Autism was first described in 1943. Jewish American psychiatrist Leo Kanner first described autism. He described a group of patients who, from an early age appeared indifferent to other people, resisted change, and engaged in repetitive activities. As these children grew, he observed a conspicuous absence of make-believe play, a fascination with objects which were often skillfully handled, mutes or language which seemed to lack communicative intent, and special skills which were expressed in remarkable feats of learning memory, calculation, or other isolated skill. Shortly after the publication of Kanner's paper in the United States, Hans Asperger, an Austrian physician, published a report, in German, in which he described four boys who, despite apparently adequate verbal and cognitive skills, displayed deficits in social interaction and milder autistic behaviors. Mental retardation was not prominent in these patients and they demonstrated deficits, which resembled a milder, higher functioning, form of autism. Although initially the two men were unaware of each other's work, both Kanner and Asperger used the word "autistic" to characterize the disturbances that they observed. This term had been introduced by Eugen Bleuler in 1911 to describe the extreme withdrawal from the outside world into the self, which he identified as the basic

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