Mallika Banerjee
University of Calcutta(Retd), India
Title: Autism – Some clinical features and management
Biography
Biography: Mallika Banerjee
Abstract
Autistic spectrum disorders are characterized by a triad of impairments affecting the development of social interaction, communication and flexibility. The triad impairment of autism is associated with a narrow, repetitive pattern of interests and activities and a range of other abnormalities of language, movement and behaviour, similar to the lesser manifestations of catatonia. Some individuals have a severe exacerbation of these features in adolescence or adult life like negativism, mutism, withdrawal, stupor, echopraxia, waxy flexibility, and stereotypy. The approach of the present researcher, as revealed through a newly developed ‘Catatonic Scale’, showed that for autism catatonic features appear to be normally distributed along the Autistic Catatonia Scale. It is seen that a good number of total population of ASD (N=500) showed presence of the symptoms in different degree and some of them (12%) may have an alarming notice to render appropriate therapeutic intervention.
Like catatonic features mood swing similar to the lesser manifestation of bipolar disorder particularly in the domain of appetite, sleep, emotional expression, impulsivity and energy may be relatively common among children and adults with autism and 2% -7% among them have mood-swing to the extent of clinical features of bipolar disorder as revealed by the newly developed mood swing scale or persons with ASD..
Expressive therapy or creative therapy, particularly Dance/Movement Therapy and Music Therapy are two performance art form which are scientifically used by the researchers in clinical field. The present researcher is going to establish the execution of Music Therapy (MT) and Dance/Movement Therapy (DMT) for the management of the abovesaid two special clinical features of Autism with her series of projects on identification and therapeutic intervention of these two clinical features on autism.