Example research essay topic: Mental Disorder Developmental Psychology - 3,059 words

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Autism Autism: Definition Autism is often explored as the chain of abnormalities in development of an individual. The system responsible for perception of external stimuli is damaged so seriously that a child is not able to establish the emotional contact with other people. A child who suffers from autism experiences permanent problems in a process of communication an social development. Psychologists often notice so-called escape from reality with fixation on inner world of affective complexes and emotional experiences. The problem of infantile autism is one of the most actual problems in the field of psychiatry. It can obviously be explained both by high percentage of diseases during the early childhood, certain difficulties of timely diagnostics, and absence of detailed approach to specialized help.

Autism is also explored as an extreme solitude of a child, a violation of his emotional bounds with his relatives. Secondly, it is examined as extreme stereotype in behavior, known as conservatism in relations with the environment. The child is afraid of any changes. Autism is known for plenitude of affective actions.

Thirdly, autism is defined as peculiar abnormality in development of speech and intellect. It is not related to a primary insufficiency of these functions. Autism is a peculiar type of psychical dysontogenesis resulting from a severe deficiency of affective tonus that hinders from forming the active and differentiated contacts with the environment. Finally, autism is also known for apparent decrease of the level of affective discomfort, prevalence of negative emotions, anxiety, and fear. Autism is related to a category of specific disorders of development of a personality being characterized by early insularity, disorders in the development of speech accompanied by echopraxia and strange behavior.

It can also be noted as inadequate affection towards inanimate objects (DSM-III-R). Actually, autism is a disorder that embraces plenitude of dysfunctions. The concept of autism is generally recognized as complex disorder and is more dangerous than epilepsy and / or mental disorder. It is treated as symptomatic event of brain dysfunction that can be caused by various lesions. Autism: The Historical Aspect Early infantile autism was described in 1943 by famous American psychiatrist L. K|Kaner.

Kaner examined the group of 11 children who acted like adults alienated from their environment, people, and realities of life. Those children were interesting because of their unique disability to interact with their parents. Children weren't able to establish any emotional contact. They were not able to act like children and show typical behavior: they didn't smile and didn't accept their relatives taking care of them.

Children preferred inanimate objects to people and animals. The speech wasn't developed properly or with significant delay. Their speech was full of stereotypes and consisted of non-expressive phrases that didn't correspond to any situation. Children often repeated phrases of adults and their speech hardly could be used for communication.

Children were afraid of any changes and were afraid of new situations. Autism: Diagnostics According to the International Classification of Diseases (ICD- 10), autism is related to the group of disorders characterized by qualitative abnormalities in social interaction and communication, as well as by limited, stereotyped, and repeatable setting of interests and activities. These qualitative disorders are general features of individual functioning in all situations. They can vary to a greater or lesser extent. In majority of cases the development of individual is affected from the very childhood, and with rare exceptions they appear during the first five years of life. Sometimes (but not always) these qualitative disorders can be characterized by a certain level of abnormality of cognitive activity.

However, these disorders are usually determined in result of behavior affecting the mental performance (irrespective of presence or absence of mental disorder). Subdivision of the group of these general disorders is mainly disputable. In definite cases these qualitative disorders are combined and / or presumably stipulated by certain medical conditions accompanied by spasms, congenital German measles, Bourneville's syndrome, cerebral leptomeningitis, cerebral lipidosis, cerebral G M 1 [generalized] gangliosidosis, and fragility of X-chromosome. Nevertheless, the disorder should be diagnosed on the basis of behavioral characteristics, irrespectively of presence or absence of accompanying medical (somatic) conditions. However, any of these accompanying medical conditions should be diagnosed separately. Mental disorder should be coded separately (codes F 70 -F 79) as it is not determined as an obligatory sign of general development disorders.

Autism: General Classification According to the International Classification of Diseases (ICD- 10), Autism is described as a pervasive developmental disorder defined by the presence of abnormal and / or impaired development that is manifest before the age of 3 years, and by the characteristic type of abnormal functioning in all three areas of social interaction, communication, and restricted, repetitive behavior. The Severity of Autism and Retardation According to the study (1995) conducted by Aman, Bourgondien, Wolford, and Sarphage who surveyed all members of the Autism Society of North California, referred by TEACCH (Autism, Clinical Paper, n. p. ), the results were as follows: Severity of Autism Retardation Not Present - 22 % Mildly 32 % Mildly 20 % Moderately 34 % Moderately 22 % Severely/ Profoundly 19 % Severely/ Profoundly 19 % Unknown/ Not Reported 15 % Unknown/ Not Reported 17 % The classification of autism is as follows: Infantile autism (F 48. 0) Infantile autism is examined as general disorder in development of a child determined by the presence of abnormal and / or irregular development. It is usually discovered during the first three years of life and is known for its abnormal functioning in three spheres of social interaction, communication and limited/ repeating behavior. The boys are more vulnerable to autism if compared with girls. The main features of autism are as follows: Expressive insufficiency and / or absence of desire to contact with other people; Isolation and / or alienation from the environment; Weakness of emotional reaction in relation to relatives / friends /parents / etc .

Sometimes the child expresses no attitude to them (affective blockade); The child doesn't express any differentiation in relation to animated/ non-animated objects. Sometimes such child will treat the doll as alive friend or vise versa protodiacrysis); Insufficiency of reaction at visual and verbal irritants. Sometimes such children behave like blind, etc. (pseudo blindness, etc); Expression of behavioral stereotypes (Sometimes a child reacts to definite events of the environment and does not notice any other events. ). It can be expressed as follows: - The child strives to preserve usual conditions of life.

He tries to keep the environment with no changes (the phenomenon of equality). For example, such children often prefer the same routes during walks, the same environment, the same circle of people, the same food, etc); - Resistance and fear of changes (Baron-Cohen S). Such children are often afraid of everything new (neo phobia); - The children are often preoccupied by monotonous stereotype primitive movements and action Monotonous games often bear resemblance of stereotype manipulations with the objects of non-game determination (keys, screws, bottles, etc) or sometimes with toys (for example, monotonous play with the car upwards and backwards. Etc). Adults often notice that such children are too occupied with their monotonous games. All attempts to attract attention of these children meet with failure and are usually ended by protest, crying and sobbing.

Visual behavior is also very peculiar (Baron-Cohen S). Such children often do not like direct eye contact. Their eyes directed inside their soul or through the people who try to contact them. Fragmentary of visual attention with prevalence of visual perception at the periphery of vision is also noticeable; Children like to be lonely. They feel considerably better when the adults and children leave them alone.

The contact with mother can be displayed in different ways. Sometimes the child shows the signs of indifference when he doesn't displays the reaction either on presence or absence of his mother, whereas there are moments when the child's reaction is negative: his attitude to his mother is negative, he tries to offend her, etc. Symbiotic form of behavior also can take place: the child refuses to leave his mother, expresses anxiety when the mother is out, however, he never shows his love and positive feelings. The Syndrome of Infantile Autism is usually related to the syndromes of interfered or asynchronous development.

Delay in development of motions accompanied by too early development of speech apparatus is quite peculiar. Such situation often can be noticed while examining children suffering from Asperger's Syndrome. In the other cases (for example, Canner's Syndrome) the psychiatrists notice delay in development of speech and, particularly, in its communicative function: - 1 / 3 or even? children suffer from mutism; - Intermediate and delayed echolalia (repetition of words and word combinations); - Neologisms, rhythms; - A child often speaks about himself using pronouns such as he, she, or impersonal verbs; - A child doesn't use mimics and gestures; Early display of these disorders (before the child reaches 2, 5 years), and regress in development are peculiar features of non-processional Syndrome of Autism; 2 / 3 of children suffering from autism suffer from mental disorder (however, it is more peculiar for patients with diagnosis Canner's Syndrome). Differentiated diagnosis a) Autism It is very important to take into account specific disorder of development of receptive speech (F 80. 2) (The ICD- 10 Classification of Mental and Behavioural Disorders World Health Organization, Geneva, 1992) with secondary socio-emotional problems; reactive disorder during the period of childhood (F 94. 1) or mental disorders (F 70 -F 79) with certain accompanying emotional or behavioral disorders; schizophrenia (F 20. -); Rette's Syndrome (F 84. 2), etc.

To be included: Autistic disorder; Infantile autism; infantile psychosis; Canner's Syndrome To be excluded: Autistic psychopathy (F 84. 5) b) Infantile autism stipulated by organic cerebral lesion (F 84. 01) To be included: Autistic disorder stipulated by organic cerebral lesions c) Infantile autism as a result of other diseases (F 84. 02) d) Atypical autism (F 84. 1) Atypical autism as a type of disorder different from infantile autism (F 84. 0 x) either by the beginning of the course of disease, or by absence of at least one of the three diagnostic criteria: To be included: Mental disorder with autistic features; Atypical infantile psychosis; e) Atypical autism with mental disorder (F 84. 11) Note: The first code is the code of disease, whereas the second code serves the code of mental disorder (F 70. xx F 79. xx). To be included: Mental disorder with autistic features; f) Atypical autism without mental disorder (F 84. 12) To be included: Atypical infantile psychosis g) Rette's Syndrome (F 84. 2) The nature of Rette's Syndrome is still unknown. Rette's Syndrome is usually distinguished basing on absence of well-thought motions, stereotyped motions, ataxia, etc. h) Other infantile disintegrative disorders (F 84. 3) To be included: Disintegrative psychosis; Heller's Syndrome; Dementia infantile; Symbiotic psychosis; Kramer-Porno psychosis; To be excluded: aphasia with epilepsy (F 80. 3 x); elective mutism (F 94. 0); Rette's Syndrome (F 84. 2); Schizophrenia (F 20. -); Hyperactive disorder accompanied by mental disorder and stereotype motions/ mental disorder with motility dysfunction and stereotype motions (F 84. 4); i) Asperger's Syndrome (F 84. 5) To be included: Autistic psychopathy; Schizoid infantile disorder; To be excluded: Shizotypical disorder (F 21.

x); General schizophrenia (F 20. 6 xx); Infantile schizophrenia (F 20. 8 xx 4); j) Other infantile disorders (F 94. 1, F 94. 2); k) Other general infantile disorders in development (F 84. 8); l) Common disorder of uncertain nature (F 84. 9); Peculiarities of Development Thinking, cognition and perception of the environment are the components of an integrative psychological process. It consists of several components such as perception, memory, attention, etc). However, thinking supposes the process in general (not only logical and space thinking that embraces functions of analysis, synthesis, analogy, comparison, generalization, classification, to mention a few). It also embraces so-called social or emotional intellect (such as ability to think or understand information in the process of communication and interaction with other people, the ability to solve problems and make decisions in everyday situations). Intellectual disorders (as well as disorders in the process of thinking) are not peculiar for autism from the clinical point of view. According to various psychiatrists, children suffering from autism are able to use such operations like correlation, classification, generalization, etc.

The main difficulty is to use knowledge and skills in their everyday life, situations of communication with other people (in modification of skills, abilities and knowledge and their application to new situation). We can examine this situation using the example described by Rita Jordan and Stuart Power. The child suffering from autism worked as a messenger-boy. He got the order to deliver a set of paints to an artist.

The artist was familiar to the boy as the child often successfully visited him with some orders (the child was able to find the artist's house, to enter door-code, and to deliver the paper). However, this time the child wasn't able to make correlation between familiar code combination with new order (as the paper was now substituted by the set of paints). The code was connected with paper but not with the house or the customer. However, this situation could be avoided if the child was instructed properly and the whole algorithm was repeated) including the number of code). This situation can be examined in the context of disorders of perception (the disorders of poly modal character that influence the basic mechanisms of perceptive processes, hyper- and hypo sensitive perception of separate stimuli), peculiarities of attention, over concentration of attention on certain bright perceptive features of objects, and other features with no social meaning.

It can be explained by problems of attention, peculiarities of memo processes, problems with interpolation, understanding of psychical characteristics of other people (their desires, intentions, etc). Obvious symbiosis of speech and thinking processes during the normal orthogenesis together with specific speech development is also perverted. For example, the results of Wexler test for children suffering from autism usually demonstrate a huge gap between indexes of non-verbal and verbal-logical intellect. No wonder that the results of intellect tests for children suffering from autism without mental disorders usually show the sum that is equal to the results for children suffering from autism with mental disorders. At the same time many children suffering from Asperger's Syndrome experience more problems with object activity. As a result of this, their verbal-logical perception is more developed than object activity.

Such children often demonstrate various disorders of dynamical characteristics of thinking activity due to general deficiency of psychical activity. The child doesn't feel himself as an active participant of process. As a result of this, when the similar problematic situation occurs, the child is not able to use his own experience to solve the problem. The disorders of self-perception is also explored as one of the main reasons of disorder of motivational aspect of thinking. At the same time, when the teacher / parent is able to include a child's interests together with emotionally- important elements, he will create motivation. Therefore, the psychologists recommend include emotionally-important elements into the tasks for correlation, classification, etc.

For example, Rita Jordan and Stuart Power insist on this type of task modeling. We can demonstrate the example of this method using the following type of the task for categorization. For example, when we ask to distinguish the categories food and beverages we need not simply to enumerate (or to choose from proposed variants) the words (cards) that correspond to one of these categories, but create several groups (for example, The stuff I like to eat / drink , and The stuff I don't like to eat / drink . IN such a way we will underline the child's presence in our situation (we will inevitable make him an active participant of the process and will create situation close to reality). Treatment and Rehabilitation The problem of treatment and rehabilitation is very important. The group of specialists (children psychiatrists, psychologist, specialists in neuropathology, podiatrists, etc) provides children with the medical and psychological help on the basis of clinical-nosological tests using various types of therapy: psycho pharmacotherapy, physiotherapy, massage, sport activities, individual and family psychotherapy, pedagogical correction, etc.

Pharmacotherapy is aimed to eliminate positive psychopathological disorders, psychical problems, etc. Therapy includes: Neuroleptics (tisercin, aminazinum, neuleptil, galoperidol, tralee, sonata, eglonitz, etc). These medications are mainly used during the active stage of autism, when the doctor needs to eliminate the symptoms of anxiety, affection, etc. Antidepressants (aachen, pyramidal, amitriptillin, ludiomil, etc) are widely used both during the period of adaptation and during the active stage of autism, when the doctor needs to eliminate the symptoms of disease; Iminostilbens (such as carbamazepine and its analogs finlepsin, tegretol, etc), value-rate (acedyprol, dopamine, convex) are used for prophylactics and treatment of faze affective disorders; Tranquilizers such as notepad, tappan, lorazepam, meza pam, siba zon relanium, seduced, fenazepam, etc) are used quite random; Nootrops (nootropil, pyracetam, encefabol, piriditol, phenibut, panthogam, picalmilone) are usually used during the stable phases of autistic defect; Vitamins (especially group B B 1, Bg, B 2, B 6, B 12), C, E are used in all cases of autism; Conclusion The problem of autism if one of the most important problems in the modern psychiatry. Psychiatrists relate it to the special category of disorders in child's development and define it as symptomatic event of brain dysfunction or a complex disorder that can be caused by various lesions and is more dangerous than mental disorder. The scientists define autism as a peculiar type of psychical dysontogenesis resulting from severe deficiency of affective tonus that hinders from forming the active and differentiated contacts with the environment.

Although there is no cure for autism, the modern medicine should make all possible to carry out researches in new technologies, methodologies and medical activities in order to support the patients and their relatives who are hoping against hope. Bibliography Baron-Cohen S. Autism and symbolic play. The British Journal of Developmental Psychology. 1987. Vol. 5. Baron-Cohen S. , Leslie A. , Frith U.

Mechanical, behavioral and intentional understanding of picture stories in autistic children. The British Journal of Developmental Psychology. 1986. Vol. 4 Jordan R. , Power S. Understanding and teaching children with autism/ Chichester.

England, 1995 The ICD- 10 Classification of Mental and Behavioural Disorders World Health Organization, Geneva, 1992 Wood, Derek. Autism, Clinical Paper. Retrieved July 26, 2006. web

Research essay sample on Mental Disorder Developmental Psychology