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Afam Autism Interventions Amongst African-Americans The Rise Essay

AfAm Autism Autism Interventions Amongst African-Americans

The rise in diagnoses of autism spectrum disorders amongst wide swaths of children in the developed world has led to many complex and unique problems for parents, physicians, and children. Understanding and properly addressing autism and its impact on learning, family, and the community in specific ethnic, religious, and cultural contexts requires accurate and comprehensive knowledge of how the problem and potential solutions are perceived by individual cultural community. The following pages provide a brief overview of research related to autism in the African-American community, with special attention paid to specific intervention programs and methods that are successful in addressing autism amongst African-Americans. From this analysis, it can be seen that well-defined problems exist when confronting autism and other mental disorders in this cultural group, and that particular frameworks need to be implemented in order to achieve truly effective results.

Autism Interventions for African-Americans

While there are some similarities in addressing autism concerns across cultural groups when it comes to directly relating with children and adolescents diagnosed with autism, there are also culturally unique factors that must be acknowledged when it comes to African-Americans. This...

From general attitudes regarding mental health and illness to specific features of autism that relate to African-American culture in unique ways, understanding these unique factors is highly important for those attempting to address autism amongst African-Americans in a meaningful way.
Because communication difficulties are one of the most salient features of autism spectrum disorders, if not the defining feature of such diagnoses, many interventions focus on finding ways to develop and implement autism-appropriate communication techniques (Dyches et al., 2004). Within the African-American community and other minority groups, however, an extra layer of communication difficulty has been demonstrated to exist, and effective autism interventions must meet the communication needs not only of the individual with autism, but also of the minority community as a whole as it exists within the larger culture of the United States (Dyches et al., 2004). In other words, certain communication problems and barriers have been identified within and between the African-American community generally, and these problems and barriers must be explicitly addressed in autism interventions, as well.

The varied communication needs…

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References

Dyches, T., Wilder, L., Sudweeks, R., Obiaker, F. & Algozzine, B. (2004). Multicultural issues in autism. Journal of Autism and Development Disorders 34(2): 211-22.

Mandell, D. & Novak, M. (2005). The role of culture in families' treatment decisions for children with autism spectrum disorders. Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Research Review 11(2): 110-5.

Yoder, P. & Stone, M. (2006). Randomized comparison of two communication interventions for preschoolers with autism spectrum disorders. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 74(3): 426-35.
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