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Petrina Berry

August 15, 2010

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has been criticised for not doing enough for children with autism during this election.

Autism Queensland says Labor’s proposal to give teachers cash incentives for improved attendance and literacy and numeracy results will not change outcomes for students with autism and Asperger’s syndrome.

Autism is a disorder of neural development which affects a person’s social skills and language skills, characterised by restricted and repetitive behaviour. Asperger’s is a milder form of autism and is largely characterised by poor social skills.

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Chief executive of Autism Queensland Penny Beeston says autism was on the rise and as a result more teachers were having to cater for these children with special needs.

“They are the children that Julia Gillard is talking about. The ones who don’t attend school,” Ms Beeston told AAP.

“It’s often the children with autism who are the ones falling out of schools.

“Paying overstretched teachers bonuses does not address the core of the problem, which is the lack of resourcing in our schools for teacher training and expert support around the learning needs of children with autism and other disabilities.”

She said early intervention programs were proving to be a success and should be extended to include the child’s entire school life.

The Labor government committed $190 million over four years to June 2012 to deliver support and services for children with autism or Asperger’s, including an early intervention program for children aged zero to six.

Ms Beeston says the early intervention package was making a big difference but it doesn’t go far enough.

“The government sees how positive the outcome of the early intervention package has been, so why not extend this to include the child’s entire schooling life and into their working lives?” she said.

Autism experts will gather on the Sunshine Coast for a two-day Autism Queensland symposium for parents, carers, local therapists, teachers, medical practitioners and support workers of people with autism on Monday and Tuesday.

A 2007 study found one in 160 Australian children aged between six and 12 years has an autism spectrum disorder.

Source:  http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/group-calls-for-more-help-for-autism-20100815-124t1.html



 

Life through the lens of Asperger’s Syndrome.



 

Article Date: 14 Aug 2010 – 0:00 PDT

Women and girls in the United States consider and engage in suicidal behavior more often than men and boys, but die of suicide at lower rate – a gender paradox enabled by U.S. cultural norms of gender and suicidal behavior, according to a psychologist who spoke at the 118th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association.

“Everywhere, suicidal behavior is culturally scripted,” said Silvia S. Canetto, PhD, of Colorado State University. “Women and men adopt the self-destructive behaviors that are expected of them within their cultures.”

While the gender paradox of suicidal behavior is common, particularly in industrialized countries, it is not universal, she said. In China, for example, women die of suicide at higher rates than men. In Finland and Ireland, men and women engage in nonfatal suicidal behavior at similar rates. There are more exceptions to the gender paradox of suicidal behavior when one examines female/male patterns of suicidality by age or culture, she said.

In some cultures, particularly in industrialized countries, such as the United States and Canada, suicide is considered a masculine act and an “unnatural” behavior for women, Canetto said at a symposium entitled “New Perspectives on Suicide Theory, Research and Prevention.”

Read in Full:  http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/197683.php



 

Article Date: 14 Aug 2010 – 0:00 PDT

Women experience chronic pain longer, more intensely and more often than men, according to a psychologist who works with both men and women dealing with diseases and conditions that leave them suffering.

“Chronic pain affects a higher proportion of women than men around the world,” said Jennifer Kelly, PhD, of the Atlanta Center for Behavioral Medicine. “We need to encourage women to take a more active role in their treatment and reduce the stigma and embarrassment of this problem.”

Read in Full:  http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/197684.php



 

By Psych Central News Editor
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on August 16, 2010 

Different risk factors are associated with the onset and persistence of subthreshold mania and depression symptoms in young people, researchers have found.

“Little is known about the factors that influence persistence of subthreshold expression of bipolar psychopathology,” explain Marieke Wichers (Maastricht University, The Netherlands) and team.

They add: “Insights into the causes of persistence would facilitate the identification of subjects at risk in an early stage of the development of psychopathology and make early intervention possible.”

The researchers therefore assessed data from the Early Developmental Stages of Psychopathology study (EDSP) on 705 young people from Munich, Germany, who were aged 14-17 years at baseline.

The participants were interviewed at baseline and at regular intervals over an average followup period of 8.3 years using the Munich-Composite International Diagnostic Interview (DIA-X/M-CIDI), an updated version of the World Health Organization’s CIDI version 1.2.

Mood symptoms were assessed using 28 items of the DIA-X/M-CIDI depression and dysthymia section and 11 items of the DIA-X/M-CIDI mania section.

Read in Full:  http://psychcentral.com/news/2010/08/16/different-factors-responsible-for-onset-persistence-of-bipolar-in-youth/16883.html

 



 

ScienceDaily (Aug. 16, 2010) — A new discovery about selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) suggests that these drugs, which are used to treat mental health disorders like depression and anxiety, have multiple effects on our cells. In a research report published in the August 2010 issue of Genetics, researchers used yeast cells to identify secondary drug targets or pathways affected by SSRIs. Such secondary pathways could help explain why different people taking the same drug may experience different effects, and could also lead to new types of drugs altogether.

“We hope that our study begins to illuminate the full breadth of pharmacological effects of antidepressants on cellular physiology starting with the simple unicellular eukaryote, budding yeast,” said Ethan O. Perlstein, Ph.D, a researcher involved in the work from the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton University in New Jersey. “Furthermore, our work validates the notion that simple model organisms may be useful for the study of complex human disease.”

Knowing that a high concentration of sertraline (Zoloft®) is toxic to yeast cells, scientists applied a lethal dose to millions of these cells and fished out a few cells that became resistant to the drug. Researchers then identified the underlying mutations in those cells and applied genetic, biochemical, and electron microscopic imaging techniques to characterize the molecular basis of resistance. Their results suggest that SSRIs may actually affect more than one process in a cell, including non-protein targets such as phospholipid membranes. Additionally, the study’s results demonstrate that sertraline targets intracellular membranes and modulate pathways involved in vesicle trafficking that are present in both yeast and human cells. Vesicle trafficking plays an important role in how neural synapses develop and function. More work is necessary, however, to determine the exact clinical relevance of this secondary drug target.

“There’s no question that SSRIs help thousands of people with mental health problems,” said Mark Johnston, Editor-in-Chief of the journal GENETICS, “but as this research shows, there is still some mystery about how they help us. This study a key first-step toward giving us a comprehensive answer to how SSRI’s work, and it may open doors to entirely new therapies.”

Source:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100816162704.htm



 

June 17th, 2010 6:44 am

By Heather Sedlock

Two autistic boys, living in New South Wales, Australia, were dumped on the side of the road by their taxi driver on June 3rd, 2010. The taxi was part of a program that gives special needs children rides to and from school where taxi companies are paid by a government agency. The boys were age 11 and 8.
Their mother was at home waiting for her 7 year old daughter (not autistic) to come home on the regular school bus. Her oldest son (age 12 with an Autism Spectrum Disorder) was waiting inside. The cab driver pulled up, without the boys, and informed the mother that her children were dropped off, where they were dropped and that they can walk home. The mother was obviously furious and then demanded that the taxi driver take her to where he dropped the boys off at.


The driver did so, but then left mother there with her sons to race back to the house as her oldest son was the only one home and her daughter would have been worried not seeing her mom at the house when she got off the bus. Luckily for the family, the boys and the taxi driver, the boys were unharmed. However, their parents are still outraged that not only did this happen but that the taxi driver got “just a slap on the hand.”


Their father, Vince Steele, recently reached out via Facebook with a note that detailed what had occurred asking his friends and family to write the taxi company. This was not the first time the drivers had acted out against his sons. The response was overwhelming and it seemed now that the taxi company was going to take him seriously. Mr. Steele agreed to an interview with Examiner.


Examiner: Tell me about your boys.

Mr. Steele:
One of them is 11 yeasr old, barely verbal, and diagnosed with intellectual impairment, but we suspect ASD as he gets older, and 8 year old (almost 9) with classic tiptoeing hand flapping autism. No sense of stranger danger for the youngest, also barely verbal. He will happily yell out a big “HI” to any stranger and would be an easy target for predators if left without adequate adult supervision. Has no sense of direction other than what he can see in his immediate environment.

Examiner: What happened in the first incident? When was it?

Mr. Steele: First incident was a couple of months or so ago. Our 12 year old son (ASD: high functioning) was picked up from his special needs school by a taxi driver who decided he couldn’t sit in the front seat due to safety issues. Our boy was always allowed by other drivers to travel in the front, so he didn’t understand why he suddenly had to sit in the back. The driver lost patience with his protests and ended up so agitating our son, who was in the back of the cab cowering in fear for the trip. When the driver got to our house, he threw open the door, and yelled out to his mother to “GET THIS F***ING KID OUT OF MY TAXI”. He then started shouting at her. I was waiting for our then-6 year old daughter’s school bus across the road. So I went over to the taxi driver and tried to explain about Autism and simply got shouted at. I naturally became angry myself and we had a shouting match. I eventually told him to never take my son in his taxi ever again and he drove off with the huffs. I phoned the taxi company and the receptionist simply told me that “Taxi drivers have melt downs occasionally too”. I emailed the company and one of the directors came to do the school run the next morning so he could get our version of events. By the afternoon, I’d received a phone call stating that the driver had recommended our transport privileges be revoked and that video footage showed me making a fist and us both shouting at each other, but there was conveniently no sound, so we were told the driver would be restricted to not conveying our children. I mentioned I was worried this could happen to other special needs children on the run and was told that because we were both making accusations of each other, they were going to leave things the way it had just been put to me. In other words, he still got to do special needs school runs, just not for our children.

Read in Full:  http://www.examiner.com/special-needs-kids-in-national/autistic-children-dumped-mid-trip-to-walk-home-by-a-taxi-driver



 

A disability election message from Bill Shorten

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If you live with disability, care for a person with disability or have an interest in disability issues, your vote has never been more important than in the 2010 federal election.

After 12 long years of neglect, the Gillard Labor Government has put support for people with disability back on the national agenda. So, if disability is important to you, I urge you to consider our record and plan for the future when you cast your vote on August 21.

Our record

We delivered historic increases to the DSP and Carer Payment now worth around $100 per fortnight for singles. We invested $1.7million in Disability Employment Services to end waiting lists for people with disability who want help finding a job.

We are doubling funding to the states and territories under the National Disability Agreement, providing more than $6 billion over five years. We ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and signed the Optional Protocol.

The Gillard Labor Government is making public buildings more accessible through new Access to premises standards, and brokered a landmark agreement with the housing industry for all new homes to meet universal design standards by 2020. We worked with the cinema industry on a watershed deal to make cinemas more accessible for people with vision or hearing impairments.

We provided early intervention services for children with autism, and if re-elected will provide $12,000 for early intervention services for up to 7800 more young children with disability. We will also provide $60 million in capital funding to build innovative, community-based supported accommodation places.

We also worked with the states and territories to develop the National Disability Strategy to outline a long-term plan to improve the lives of people with disability, promote participation and create a more inclusive society. The Strategy outlines a nationwide approach to improving the lives of people with disability. It will guide public policy across governments and aims to bring about change in all mainstream services and programs as well as community infrastructure.

For more information about our election policies, see: http://www.alp.org.au/agenda/

The future

The Gillard Labor Government knows that much more must be done to ensure that people with disability are able to fulfil their potential. Prime Minister Gillard has said that the status quo in disability can not continue, and a re-elected Gillard Labor Government is committed to major reform in disability services.

That’s why our government has asked the Productivity Commission to undertake its landmark inquiry into the feasibility of a national care and support scheme for people with disability. A national disability insurance scheme would be a complex and transformative reform that requires detailed consideration. The Productivity Commission inquiry will assess whether a national disability insurance scheme would be appropriate, practical and economically responsible in the Australian context.

Make your vote count

The Coalition has little credibility on disability issues. The former Coalition Government ignored people with disability and their carers for 12 long years and stood by while demand grew for disability services and disability pensioners struggled with the cost of living.

So, if disability policy is important to you, an important choice awaits you on 21 August. A vote for the Gillard Labor Government will ensure that the needs of people with disability and their carers will remain a first order priority for the Federal Government.

The choice is clear – make sure your vote counts.

Regardless of the result of the election on August 21st, the fight for a better deal for people with disability will continue. 

Yours sincerely,

Bill Shorten

Australia’s “kingmakers” meet to discuss next government

Tuesday 24th August, 2010.

A handful of independent and Green MPs who will decide the make-up of Australia’s minority government were set to begin talks on Tuesday to decide whether to support Labor or the conservative opposition’s bid for power. Skip related content

Latest counting gives Labor and the opposition conservatives 71 seats each — with 76 seats needed to form the government — but poll experts predict both will end up with 73, leaving three independents and a Green MP holding the balance of power.

“Let’s draw breath and wait for the numbers to come in … and then get down to some policy issues,” said independent Rob Oakeshott, indicating the political limbo would last until a final result is declared, which may take 10 days.

There were no talks yet scheduled with Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard or opposition leader Tony Abbott. Bookmakers say Labor is favourite to govern with a handful of independents.

At stake in the election is the fate of Labor’s planned 30 percent resources tax, a $38 billion fibre-optic broadband network and a future carbon price which the power sector says is needed to ensure continued investment.

Standard and Chartered Bank’s regional economist Simon Wong said the mining tax was now dead, whoever ended up in power.

“The mining tax is likely to be further scaled back or even scrapped, even in the case of a Labor-led minority,” he said.

“The debate over this issue in the run-up to the election proved to be a key factor that eroded Labor’s initial lead, and is likely to be too heavy a political burden for the incoming administration to bear.”

Abbott said he could run a stable government, in contrast to tensions in the Labor Party, and said he would offer “serious roles” to the independents. He declined to say if he would change any policies, and noted the result could still take some time.

“No-one should expect that this will be a speedy process. The counting itself still has a long way to go,” Abbott told reporters.

Oakeshott has called for parliamentary reform and a unity cabinet in which politicians across the political spectrum put aside rivalries and join on issues that would unite the politically-fractured nation.

News cartoons made light of his idea, showing Abbott and Gillard standing arm in arm, surrounded by flying pigs and fairies, and with an Irish leprechaun standing beside Greens lawmakers at the end of a rainbow with a pot of gold.

MARKETS CONCERNED

Financial markets have rowed back on early expectations of a minority conservative government and now seem comfortable that both sides are fiscally prudent, although they would be concerned by any Green-backed government.

Both Labor and the Liberal-National coalition have pledged to return the budget to surplus by 2012-13.

Still, a Labor-Green minority government, which may see an increase in spending, would worry markets.

“There would be concerns about what sort of deals are done with the Greens to be able to guarantee that support,” said Craig James, chief economist at CommSec equities securities.

There was also concern over how a future minority government may deal with foreign investment in Australia.

China is the third-largest foreign investor in Australia and its biggest trading partner, but increasing investment in the resource sector by state-owned Chinese firms has led to concerns among many voters and lawmakers.

Labor and the opposition have said they will review foreign investment on a cases-by-case basis, but analysts raised the possibility of protectionist pressure from some independents.

“Given the extraordinary circumstances of a hung parliament, and the as yet unknown requirements of the independents who may hold the key to governing, it cannot be discounted that changes to the foreign investment regime may be bargained for support,” said Malcolm Brennan, special counsel at Mallesons Stephen Jaques.

(Additional reporting by James Grubel in Canberra and Michael Perry in Sydney; Editing by Ed Davies and Sanjeev Miglani)

Source:  http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20100824/tts-uk-australia-election-ca02f96.html



 

By Douglas Eby 

“I don’t like emotions… For some reason I’m more comfortable in imaginary circumstances.” Actor William H. Macy

One of the primary tools we have for creative expression is imagination.

In his book “Stumbling on Happiness” Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert declares that “To see is to experience the world as it is, to remember is to experience the world as it was, but to imagine—ah, to imagine is to experience the world as it isn’t and has never been, but as it might be.

“The greatest achievement of the human brain is its ability to imagine objects and episodes that do not exist in the realm of the real, and it is this ability that allows us to think about the future.”

And isn’t that one of the prime functions of creative thought?

But Gilbert also proposes that imagination may directly impact our sense of happiness in limiting or distorting ways.

In a column of hers, Meghan Daum writes that the book suggests “happiness is largely an anticipatory experience… we spend much of our time not so much experiencing pleasure as thinking about future pleasure and taking steps to ensure its attainment.”

She thinks “the 21st century cultural preoccupation with happiness [is] peer pressure of the most toxic variety… For those whose happiness standards exceed the reach of besotted emoticons, a prescription for a serotonin reuptake inhibitor has become the thinking man’s smiley face… But considering the intangible nature of happiness, the inherent ephemeralness of it, the difficulty, even, of defining it, it bears asking why we’re so focused on it.” [From “Goodbye to you, Mr. Smiley,” Los Angeles Times, May 20, 2006]

Why indeed.

Certainly many creative people do suffer from depression, anxiety and other mood disorders that can disable creative expression [see my related site Depression and Creativity] — but happiness – or even contentment – may not be such a worthwhile goal for a creative person, at least by itself, and reliance on imagination for defining life value can be distorting.

In his review of “Stumbling on Happiness” Malcolm Gladwell [author of Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking] notes that “We’re far too accepting of the conclusions of our imaginations.

Read in Full:  http://blogs.psychcentral.com/creative-mind/2010/08/imagination-and-happiness-and-creativity/



 

By Charles H. Elliott, Ph.D. 

Especially since the advent of the Great Recession a couple of years ago, many people have assumed if they just had a little more money, all would be well in their worlds. Of course in the decades before this economic meltdown, we’d seen huge rises in people’s income, wealth and purchases. During the economic boom times we also saw alarming increases in rates of addiction, depression and anxiety. So, what’s going on?

In truth, researchers have consistently seen very small connections between wealth and happiness. Poverty and destitution are something else; they do appear to contribute to unhappiness and a lack of satisfaction from life. But once you get past that point, greater and greater wealth fails to deliver on the promise of substantially increased happiness. In fact, people’s absolute level of income (past poverty) has almost no connection to their reported sense of well being.

In order to keep this discussion balanced, we should point out that one’s perceived wealth, as compared or ranked in relation to one’s neighbors and peers, does make a small difference in how happy people claim to be. But the difference is small and falls far short of what people expect money to do for them. Doesn’t seem particularly logical does it?

A recent article in the journal Psychological Science suggests one possible reason for these findings. Specifically, the researchers suggested that wealth may essentially trash people’s ability to savor everyday positive experiences. They defined savoring as strategies that people use to amplify, augment, or extend positive experiences. For example, you can savor positive things by focusing on the present, spending time anticipating the positive event, or telling other people about how nice the event was for you.

And research demonstrates that wealthy people are relatively terrible at savoring small, everyday events. Apparently once you’ve experienced the delights of using personal luxurious jet airplanes, having your own personal chef prepare all of your meals, and vacationing in sumptuous seaside villas, you don’t tend to savor positive events and experiences such as romantic weekends, completing a difficult task, or encountering some natural wonder.

Read in Full:  http://blogs.psychcentral.com/anxiety/2010/08/money-worry-woes-anxiety-and-happiness/