Letters to the Editor
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autism
Mental health disorders of infancy, childhood and young adulthood result from a combination of genetic predisposition and, overwhelmingly, childhood environment including quality of early attachment. Yes, it’s that simple.
Parents grasp onto unsupported rationalizations like the hypothesized thimerisol–autism link for precisely the same reason that, for example: 1) we distract ourselves with trivial links between food additives and ADHD when we know that nearly consistently children with ADHD have prior exposure to trauma or attachment injury, 2) we ignore the solid links between dysfunctional communication patterns, conflicts and insecurity in family dynamics with schizophrenia, 3) we point to skinny models as explanations for eating disorders in young women, when we have evidence to support association with invalidating family environment, etc.
Parents are simply not ready and willing to tolerate the discomfort associated with accepting the overwhelming evidence for the role of family environment in these disorders. The medical model, which is entirely unrelated to mental health disorders, aids and abets Family in preserving a safe distance from understanding these disorders in ways that might lead to more effective use of psychosocial interventions, by offering parents distracting links to viruses or food additives, or addiction as a “disease”.
Autism represents an excessive, maladaptive shunting of brain development toward functions related to ordering, memory, orientation, pattern, and mapping, explaining the special positive, intellectual abilities of kids with this spectrum, who are not at intellectual deficit to an extent often thought. Those over-developed abilities come at the cost of impaired development of ability to read the social environment.
An overwhelming need in early development is for the organism to learn to safely venture into a hostile, potentially lethal natural environment, locate resources needed for survival, and find its way safely back to a secure base. Survival has depended on this, constituting a potent selective force and consequent brain architecture. The infant learns this skill, critical to survival, by gradually exploring its environment, ordering and memorizing features, learning and mapping safe routes, three-dimensional patterns, auditory, tactile and visual environmental cues, and refuges. It’s about life and death. What millions of years of selective pressure has wired into our brains as necessary for survival, we, as positivist Western culture, have provided effective barriers to for our children: physical restraints like playpens, stimulatory restraints like TV, and shunting them daily to and from so many different physical environments (home to pre-school to day care to sitter to home to new apartment to playgroup to new day care) that they are not provided the opportunity to master safe navigation in any environment. They are prevented, distracted, or overloaded, and their brains maladaptively over-react developmentally to the blocked survival need.
This is why autism is not about socioeconomic status, why there seem to be strong links to TV exposure, and why incidence is much higher in males – evolutionarily selection has operated more strongly on males who do not learn to safely venture out, map, and navigate in their environments.
Ms. Lloyd is right on this account – defensiveness and distraction by parents and proponents of medical models are not likely to further our understanding and ability to prevent and treat these disorders.