Earlier posts described
a study about the
prevalence of autism in
Korea, and the reluctance of Korean parents to address the problem.
The New York Times reports on an effort by Autism Speaks to encourage Korean Americans to get help for autistic kids.
“More so than other populations, Korean-Americans really measure their own self-worth, and the worth of the family, in terms of what the child is able to achieve and what the child means to the family,” said Roy Richard Grinker, a professor of anthropology at George Washington University and the senior author of the South Korea study.
...
It is a crucial moment for autism across the United States. The number of children who receive a diagnosis of autism has been rising for years, without any consensus about why, other than increased awareness of the condition. At the same time, autism itself is being redefined: the newest edition of the country’s manual for mental disorders, released weeks ago, collapsed some categories of autism, including Asperger syndrome, under the umbrella of “autism spectrum disorder.” Some experts have predicted the change will lead to fewer diagnoses, and hence cuts in public spending on therapy and special education.
In New York City, the number of public school students classified as having autism this year, 10,199, or roughly 1 percent of enrolled students, is up 50 percent from four years ago, according to the city’s Education Department. Diagnoses among Asian students have also jumped. But while they make up 16 percent of the school system, they account for only 8 percent of those with autism diagnoses.
...
“We are trying to build a model, for outreach and facilitation, that would support immigrant families, minority families, to access services available from school systems and from cities and states,” said Andy Shih, an official at Autism Speaks who is managing the initiative.
As diagnoses of autism have become more common, some early intervention providers have taken advantage of the growth in public spending, and lax oversight, by billing for services that were not needed or never provided. Dr. Shih acknowledged that some businesses might “exploit parents scared and confused about how to best support their children.”
...
Unscrupulous providers are not the only potential pitfall. Young Seh Bae, 48, who leads a committee of the Korean American Behavioral Health Association and is the mother of a 16-year-old boy with autism, said she worried that a focus on Koreans, in both the South Korea study and the Flushing effort, could exacerbate stereotypes.
...
And though the study in South Korea was “rigorous,” Dr. Winston Chung, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, said it should be viewed carefully because the researchers used tools designed by a Western culture to measure children in an Eastern one. Typical behaviors in a “Confucian society,” where the norms for eye contact, gesturing social reciprocity and expressing oneself are “profoundly different,” and where the skill of nunchi — measuring someone’s mood and desires without speaking — is valued, could be misconstrued as autistic in some cases, he said.
