Autism Essays (2130 words) - Autism, Psychiatric Diagnosis

Autism Autism Throughout the years the diagnosis of autism has changed dramatically. Once, it was mistakenly diagnosed as childhood schizophrenia. Now that much more extensive research has been done, researchers have found distinct characteristics that are typical of autistic individuals. It is most often characterized by difficulty in the child's ability to respond to people, events, and objects. Responses to sensations of light, sound, and feeling may be exaggerated. Delayed speech and language may be associated. Other characteristics include: impairment in ability to make peer friendships, absence of imaginative activity, stereotyped body movements, persistent preoccupation with parts of objects, marked distress over changes in trivial aspects of the environment, unreasonable insistence on following routines in precise detail, a restricted range of interests and a preoccupation with one narrow interest, along with many others. Although certain characteristics are typical of autistic children, the diagnosis is a multidisciplinary effort. The diagnosis requires a team of professionals because of the many unique characteristics and behaviors of the autistic child Each professional is assigned a different behavior to monitor. However, the psychiatrist and the psychologist are mainly responsible for the diagnosis and the psychological evaluations involved. The onset of this condition is usually observed within the first two and a half years. In 1968, the APA referred to autism as a single disorder, and now it is known to be a syndrome of behavioral and medical effects. Along with autism, several related disorders are grouped under Pervasive Developmental Disorders, PDD, a general category which is characterized by severe and pervasive impairment in several areas of development. The standard reference is known as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, DSM, which is now in its fourth edition. The DSM classifies the different types of PDD which are often mistaken as autism. The other PDD are Asperger's Disorder, Rett's Disorder, Childhood Disintegrative Disorder, and Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified, PDD-NOS, which is commonly referred to as atypical autism. The term autistic spectrum disorder is frequently used to acknowledge the diversity and severity of autism . The characteristics and symptoms of autism can present themselves in a wide variety of combinations. There is no standard type and no suc h thing as a typical person with autism. The most commonly used terms to describe people with autism are: autistic-like, autistic tendencies, autistic spectrum, high functioning, or low functioning, and more-abled or less-abled. Autistic disorder is also know as Infantile Autism or Kanner's Syndrome. Most children with this condition exhibit poor social skills, and impaired cognitive functioning and language. What is it that causes this national crisis, affecting over 400,000 families, and costing the nation over 13 billion dollars. Autism is the third most common developmental disorder, more common than Down Syndrome, multiple sclerosis, or cystic fibrosis, and autism research still receives less than 5% of the funding of the other diseases. With the lack of funding, researchers from all over the world are spending a considerable amount of time and energy trying to find answers. A single specific cause of autism is still not known. The most current research links autism to neurological or biological differences in the brain, and in many families a pattern of autism or autism related disabilities appears. This could suggest that autism has a genetic basis, although no specific gene has been directly linked t o autism. Researchers believe that a genetic basis would be highly complex, involving a combination of several genes. Direct causes have not been discovered, but several theories has been proven false. Autism is not a mental disorder, children with autism are not unruly kids who choose not to behave. Autism is not caused by bad parenting, and no known psychological factors in child development have been proven to cause autism. Children with autism begin to show signs of this disease at around the age of two. This is when parents may notice delays in language, play, or social interaction. One of the many problems autistic children have is with social detachment and unresponsiveness. Autistic babies do not smile at there parents or reach out to be cuddled or picked up. They often do not play with other children, appearing to be in there their own world, unaware of people or events around them. Many children

Laura Clay, Southern Womens Suffrage Leader

Laura Clay, Southern Womens Suffrage Leader Laura Clay Facts Known for: major Southern woman suffrage spokesperson. Clay, like many Southern suffragists, saw womens suffrage as reinforcing white supremacy and power.Occupation: reformerDates: February 9, 1849 - June 29, 1941 Laura Clay Biography Laura Clay Quote: Suffrage is Gods cause, and God leads our plans. Laura Clays mother was Mary Jane Warfield Clay, from a wealthy family prominent in Kentucky horse racing and breeding, herself an advocate of womens education and womens rights. Her father was the noted Kentucky politician Cassius Marcellus Clay, a cousin of Henry Clay, who founded an anti-slavery newspaper and helped found the Republican party. Cassius Marcellus Clay was the United States ambassador to Russia for 8 years under Presidents Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson and Ulysses S. Grant. He returned from Russia for a time and is credited with talking Lincoln into signing the Emancipation Proclamation. Laura Clay had five brothers and sisters; she was the youngest. Her older sisters were involved in working for womens rights. Mary B. Clay, one of her older sisters, organized Kentuckys first womens suffrage organization, and was president of the American Woman Suffrage Association from 1883 to 1884. Laura Clay was born at her familys home, White Hall, in Kentucky, in 1849. She was the youngest of four girls and two boys. Lauras mother, Mary Jane Clay, was largely in charge, during her husbands long absences, of managing the family farms and property inherited from her family. She saw that her daughters were educated. Cassius Marcellus Clay was from a wealthy slaveholding family. He became an anti-slavery advocate, and among other incidents where he was met with violent reactions to his ideas, he was once nearly assassinated for his views. He lost his seat in the Kentucky state House because of his abolitionist views. He was a supporter of the new Republican Party, and nearly became Abraham Lincolns vice president, losing that spot to Hannibal Hamlin. At the beginning of the Civil War, Cassius Clay helped organize volunteers to protect the White House from a Confederate takeover, when there were no federal troops in the city. During the years of the Civil War, Laura Clay attended Sayre Female Institute in Lexington, Kentucky. She attended a finishing school in New York before returning to her family home. Her father opposed to her further education. The Reality of Womens Rights From 1865 to 1869, Laura Clay helped her mother run the farms, her father still absent as ambassador to Russia. In 1869, her father returned from Russia and the next year, he moved his four-year-old Russian son into the family home at White Hall, his son from a long affair with a prima ballerina with the Russian ballet. Mary Jane Clay moved to Lexington, and Cassius sued her for divorce on grounds of abandonment, and won. (Years later, he created more scandal when he married a 15 year old servant, probably against her will as he had to restrain her from leaving. He divorced her after she attempted suicide. That marriage ended in divorce just three years later.) Under existing Kentucky laws, he could have claimed all the property his ex-wife had inherited from her family and he could have kept her from the children; he claimed his wife owed him $80,000 for her years living at White Hall. Fortunately for Mary Jane Clay, he did not pursue those claims. Mary Jane Clay and her daughters who were still unmarried lived on the farms she inherited from her family, and were supported by the income from these. But they were aware the under the existing laws, they were able to do so only because Cassius Clay did not pursue his rights to the property and income. Laura Clay managed to attend one year of college at the University of Michigan and one semester at State College of Kentucky, leaving to put her efforts into working for womens rights. Working for Womens Rights in the South Laura Clay Quote: Nothing is so laborsaving as a vote, properly applied. In 1888, the Kentucky Woman Suffrage Association was organized, and Laura Clay was elected its first president. She remained president until 1912, by which time the name had changed to the Kentucky Equal Suffrage Association. Her cousin, Madeleine McDowell Breckinridge, succeeded her as president. As head of the Kentucky Equal Suffrage Association, she led efforts to change Kentucky laws to protect married womens property rights, inspired by the situation in which her mother had been left by her divorce. The organization also worked to have female doctors on staff at state mental hospitals, and to have women admitted to State College of Kentucky (Transylvania University) and Central University. Laura Clay was also a member of the Womens Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and she was part of the Womans Club movement, holding state offices in each organization. While Laura Clays father had been a liberal Republican and perhaps in reaction to that Laura Clay became active in Democratic Party politics. Elected to the board of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), newly merged in 1890, Clay chaired the new groups membership committee and was its first auditor. Federal or State Suffrage? Around 1910, Clay and other Southern suffragists began to be uncomfortable with efforts within the national leadership to support a federal woman suffrage amendment. This, they feared, would provide a precedent for federal interference in the voting laws of Southern states which discriminated against African Americans. Clay was among those who argued against the strategy of a federal amendment. Laura Clay was defeated in her bid for reelection to the board of the NAWSA in 1911. In 1913, Laura Clay and other Southern suffragists created their own organization, the Southern States Woman Suffrage Conference, to work for state-level womens suffrage amendments, to support voting rights only for white women. Probably hoping for compromise, she supported federal legislation to allow women to vote for members of Congress, providing the women otherwise qualified as voters in their states. This proposal was debated at NAWSA in 1914, and a bill to implement this idea was introduced into Congress in 1914, but it died in committee. In 1915-1917, like many of those involved in womens suffrage and womens rights, including Jane Addams and Carrie Chapman Catt, Laura Clay was involved in the Womans Peace Party. When the United States entered World War I, she left the Peace Party. In 1918, she briefly joined in supporting a federal amendment, when President Wilson, a Democrat, endorsed it. But then Clay resigned her membership in the NAWSA in 1919. She also resigned from the Kentucky Equal Rights Association that she had headed from 1888 to 1912. She and others formed, instead, a Kentucky-based Citizens Committee to work for a suffrage amendment to the Kentucky state constitution. In 1920, Laura Clay went to Nashville, Tennessee, to oppose ratification of the woman suffrage amendment. When it (barely) passed, she expressed her disappointment. Democratic Party Politics Laura Clay Quote: I am a Jeffersonian Democrat. In 1920, Laura Clay founded the Democratic Womens Club of Kentucky. That same year was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. Her name was placed in nomination for President, making her the first woman so nominated at a major partys convention. She was nominated in 1923 as a Democratic candidate for the Kentucky State Senate. In 1928, she campaigned in Al Smiths presidential race. She worked after 1920 for repeal of the 18th Amendment (prohibition), even though she herself was a teetotaler and a WCTU member. She was a member of the Kentucky state convention that ratified repeal of prohibition (the 21st Amendment), primarily on states rights grounds. After 1930 After 1930, Laura Clay led mostly a private life, focusing on reform within the Episcopal church, her lifelong religious affiliation. She interrupted her privacy to oppose a law paying male teachers more than female teachers would be paid. She worked mostly within the church on womens rights, especially on allowing women to be delegates to church councils, and on permitting women to attend the Episcopal churchs University of the South. Laura Clay died in Lexington in 1941. The family home, White Hall, is a Kentucky historical site today. Laura Clays Positions Laura Clay supported womens equal rights to education and to the vote. At the same time, she believed that black citizens were not yet developed enough to vote. She did support, in principle, educated women of all races getting the vote, and spoke at times against ignorant white voters. She contributed to an African American church project aimed at self-improvement. But she also supported states rights, supported the idea of white superiority, and feared federal interference in Southern states voting laws, and so, except briefly, did not support a federal amendment for woman suffrage. Connections The boxer Muhammed Ali, born Cassius Marcellus Clay, was named for his father who was named for Laura Clays father. Books About Laura Clay Paul E. Fuller. Laura Clay and the Womans Rights Movement 1975.John M. Murphy. Laura Clay (1894-1941), a Southern Voice for Womans Rights. Women Public Speakers in the United States, 1800-1925: A Bio-Critical Sourcebook. Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, ed. 1993.