Fathers' Perspectives

I am a dad. Not a common dad. Rather, I am uncommon. Uncommon and very much like Dan Marino, Doug Flutie, Joe Mantegna, Sylvester Stallone, and Ed Asner. We are all dads to children with autism, or, as I will call us, “Autism Dads.” Having a child on the spectrum is a unique dad experience. And having a child that receives an autism diagnosis can be surprising. Adjustment to this new information can take some time. When we have a family member with autism, each family member's role must shift a little with unknown expectations. This chapter has the purpose of sharing from one dad to another some of the important steps you should consider taking to support your child on the autism spectrum in the kindergarten-through-high-school academic journey. First, a discussion of relevant literature and finally some tips and suggestions based on experience are presented.

Autism and Health Literacy in the Context of Angola

This chapter presents an approach to the scientific concepts on autism, diagnosis, and treatment criteria, as well as the assessment of knowledge on this subject and its relationship with the level of health literacy in the context of Angolan society. To substantiate the importance of health literacy, dimensions of access, understanding and use of health information, and decision making, an observational case study related to a research carried out in 2012 for the tracking of signs of autism is explored. The sample consisted of a group of 200 mothers of children and adolescents who were initially diagnosed with intellectual disabilities. This sample, for convenience, was selected from students who had previously been diagnosed with intellectual disabilities and attended a public school located in the municipality of Rangel, in the Province of Luanda, capital of Angola. The current stigma still exists about the disease.

Autism Genetics

With autism there are so many questions. Researchers, educators, family members, and individuals with autism ask questions about the disorder. What causes the disorder? What are the outcomes? What does an autism diagnosis mean in terms of quality of life? Along with these practical questions, most individuals and families will also ask, “Why?” Why does one person have autism and not another? We are fortunate to be living in the 21st century where many elite researchers have developed answers to these questions and even answers, “Why?” In fact, many researchers are beginning to identify that there is a genetic component to autism. The following chapter will discuss a brief overview of critical historical research studies illuminating the relationship between autism and genetics.

Childhood diagnoses in individuals identified as autistics in adulthood

Background Autism is a developmental condition, where symptoms are expected to occur in childhood, but a significant number of individuals are diagnosed with autism for the first time in adulthood. Here, we examine diagnoses given in childhood among individuals that are diagnosed with autism in adulthood, to investigate whether the late autism diagnosis might be explained by misdiagnosis in childhood or diagnostic overshadowing. Methods Through the Danish National Patient Registry, we identified individuals diagnosed with autism in adulthood (N = 2199), as well as a control sample with no records of an autism diagnosis (N = 460,798) and calculated how many had received different psychiatric or neurological diagnoses in childhood. Results We found that most childhood diagnoses were overrepresented in those with an adult autism diagnosis, and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, affective disorders, anxiety, and stress disorders were the most prevalent childhood conditions in this group. However, 69% of males and 61% of females with adult autism diagnoses were not found to have received any of the investigated diagnoses before 18 years of age, and most childhood diagnoses were given after the age of 12. Limitations Milder to moderate cases of psychiatric conditions that have been solely treated by family physicians or school psychologists may not be fully included in our dataset. The study is based on data from the Danish health care system, and further research is needed to assess whether the findings can be generalized to other countries. Conclusion A majority of those with an adult autism diagnosis had no records of having received any of the investigated diagnoses in childhood. In these cases, the late autism diagnosis is therefore unlikely to be explained by either misdiagnosis or overshadowing. This result is at odds with the prevailing notion that autistic symptoms tend to diminish with age. Therefore, further research is warranted to examine how and if early signs of autism may have manifested among these individuals, and how similar they are to autistic people diagnosed earlier in their development.

Reexamining Empathy in Autism: The Role of Empathic Disequilibrium in Autism and Autistic Traits

Background: While many autistics report feelings of excessive empathy, their experience is not reflected by most of the current literature, which typically, but not always, suggests that autism is characterized by intact emotional empathy and reduced cognitive empathy. To try and bridge this gap in empirical findings and with respect to individuals' experiences, we examined a novel conceptualization of empathy termed empathic disequilibrium, i.e., the imbalance between emotional and cognitive empathy. Empathic disequilibrium was previously found to predict autistic traits in non-autistic population, suggesting it is an important empathy measure. Here, we aimed to extend the generalizability of empathic disequilibrium to the autistic population and to provide a better analytical approach to examine this construct.Methods: We analyzed self-reports of empathy and autistic traits in a large cohort (N = 4,914) of autistic and non-autistic individuals. We applied a polynomial regression with response surface analysis to examine empathic disequilibrium and total empathy as predictors of an autism diagnosis and autistic traits. Results: Total empathy and empathic disequilibrium each predicted autism. There was a higher probability for diagnosis in individuals with lower total empathy, but also in individuals with higher emotional relative to cognitive empathy. Linear and non-linear patterns linked empathy, empathic disequilibrium, and autistic traits and diagnosis, with empathic disequilibrium being more prominent in females. Conclusions: Empathic disequilibrium might allow for a more nuanced and sensitive understanding of empathy and its link with autism. This study provides empirical evidence that empathic disequilibrium is at least as informative as empathy for assessing autism, and offers a novel analytical approach for examining the role of empathy at the phenomenological level.