(Press-News.org) Nearly 78 per cent of children with autism have at least one mental health condition and nearly half have two mental health conditions or more, according to a new U.S. study from the University of British Columbia's department of psychology and the AJ Drexel Autism Institute at Drexel University (Pennsylvania).
The study also found mental health conditions present in 44.8 per cent of pre-school age children with autism. The scope of the issue among that age group had not previously been established using a large, population-based sample.
By contrast, the study found that only 14.1 per cent of youth without autism (ages 3-17) had mental health conditions.
It is the first research since 2008 to examine the prevalence of mental health conditions among children with autism at a population level, and signals a need for healthcare systems to adapt to account for the overlap.
"For a long time, mental health in kids with autism was neglected because the focus was on autism. There's much greater awareness now, but we don't have enough people trained to provide mental health treatments to kids on the autism spectrum," said Dr. Connor Kerns, an assistant professor in UBC's psychology department and lead author of the study. "We need to bridge these two systems and the different sets of providers that tend to treat these children."
Autism, or autism spectrum disorder (ASD), is a complex brain development disorder that impacts approximately 2.6 per cent of the U.S. population. People with autism can have difficulty communicating and interacting socially. They often demonstrate restricted, repetitive behaviour patterns. The term "spectrum" reflects the fact that symptoms can vary widely from one person to the next.
The researchers analyzed data from the 2016 National Survey of Children's Health, a survey of more than 42,000 caregivers with a total of 1,131 ASD-diagnosed children in their care.
These children were considered to also have a mental health condition if the parent/caregiver had reported a healthcare provider diagnosing the child with any of the following:
anxiety (39.5%)
depression (15.7%)
behavior/conduct problem (60.8%)
Tourette syndrome (1.8%)
ADHD (48.4%)
Mental health conditions became more prevalent as children with autism grew older. Still, the 44.8-per-cent prevalence among pre-school children is significant because early intervention is known to increase the effectiveness of mental health treatment.
The study compared the prevalence of mental health conditions in children with ASD, children with intellectual disabilities, and children with other ongoing, chronic conditions that require attention from the healthcare system. Mental health conditions were significantly more prevalent among children with autism than among the other groups.
For example, anxiety was 6.3 times more prevalent among children with autism than among children with intellectual disabilities, and three times more prevalent than it was among children with other special healthcare needs.
"There's something specific about autism that is increasing this mental health burden, and it's true not only for anxiety, but also for depression, behaviour problems and attention problems. This is a special population that requires special attention," said Dr. Kerns.
The researchers hope these eye-opening new numbers will prompt changes to public policy that make it easier for mental health treatments to be approved and funded for children with autism.
"If we think about ways to screen and intervene against these mental health conditions before these children even get to school, then we might be way ahead of the game," said Dr. Kerns. "The longer mental health conditions are allowed to exist and worsen, the harder they are going to be to treat. It's much better to catch them early. Right now, we don't have a great system for doing that."
INFORMATION:
The study was published Dec. 22 in The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.
Malta, a sovereign microstate in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, has no shortage of sunny beaches, honey-bricked villages and rugged countryside. Beyond its Mediterranean charm, Malta is home to a geographically and culturally isolated population whose unique genetic makeup, makes this island nation a goldmine for genetics research.
Four years ago, the University of Malta set up a national ALS Registry and Biobank to identify patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and collect data on their residence, occupation, lifestyle and environmental exposures. Blood samples ...
With the global student community taking online courses as a result of the anti-Covid-19 measures, a study led by the University of Geneva (UNIGE) reveals that online courses deepen inequalities between gifted and less gifted students by 5%. The results of the study, which was based on data collected in 2016-2017 prior to the anti-Covid lockdown initiatives, are published in the Journal of the European Economic Association. They indicate that this learning gap between different student profiles is mainly due to their behaviour and motivation. The study gives higher education establishments worldwide practical ways to deal with lockdown or the chronic lack of space in lecture theatres, including via co-educational ...
Cancer cells are smart when it comes to anti-cancer drugs, evolving and becoming resistant to even the strongest chemotherapies over time. To combat this evasive behavior, researchers have developed a method named D2O-probed CANcer Susceptibility Test Ramanometry (D2O-CANST-R) to see, at single-cell/organelle level, how pharmaceuticals induce cancer cell death and how cancer cells adapt.
The research, conducted by the Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology (QIBEBT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), was published on Jan. 12 in Analytical Chemistry, ...
A new study by researchers from Chulalongkorn University, Tohoku University, and The George Washington University is the first to identify autism candidate genes that may be responsible for the sex-specific effects of bisphenol A (BPA) on the brain. It suggests BPA may serve as an environmental factor that contributes to the prevalence of male bias in autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
The research was published in the journal Scientific Reports.
BPA is widely used in many products in our daily life and abundant in micro/nanoplastics found in the environment, ...
Summary
Ultra-small nanomedicines of approximately 18 nm were fabricated by dynamic ion-pairing between Y-shaped block copolymers and nucleic acid drugs, such as siRNA and antisense drugs.
Chemically modified and double-stranded oligonucleotides dramatically enhanced the stability of the ultra-small nanomedicines in the blood circulation.
The ultra-small size allows for high permeability in cancer tissues by slipping through the cracks in tumor vasculatures and stromal tissues.
Clinical trials and preclinical studies using the developed ultra-small nanomedicines are proceeding for cancer therapy.
Published in the website of Journal of Controlled Release on January 6.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jconrel.2021.01.001
Main body
January 19, 2021 - Kawasaki in ...
The survival of pesky little flies in showers and other wet areas around the house, impervious to water droplets that may be larger than they are, comes down to more than quick reflexes. The insects have evolved a unique coating of hairs that allows them to shrug off water droplets of almost any size, KAUST researchers have shown.
Sigurdur Thoroddsen, who leads the high-speed fluids imaging laboratory at KAUST, couldn't help but take a professional interest in the small drain flies that made a home in his shower and never seemed to wash away. Thoroddsen's research focuses on multiphase flow and dynamics at air-liquid interfaces -- an environment where drain flies have found a niche, despite some risky physics.
Insects are so small that the surface tension of ...
What goes on in the sun can only be observed indirectly. Sunspots, for instance, reveal the degree of solar activity - the more sunspots are visible on the surface of the sun, the more active is our central star deep inside. Even though sunspots have been known since antiquity, they have only been documented in detail since the invention of the telescope around 400 years ago. Thanks to that, we now know that the number of spots varies in regular eleven-year cycles and that, moreover, there are long-lasting periods of strong and weak solar activity, which is also reflected in the climate on Earth.
However, how solar activity developed before the start of systematic records has so far been ...
Every year around 734 million tons of wheat straw are produced worldwide, a large amount of waste, which is cheap and has had no well-defined use until now. Recently, the RNM-271 Chemical Engineering and FQM-383 NANOVAL Organic Chemistry research groups at the University of Córdoba have been able to give a new use to this agricultural excess material, by using it as the foundation in order to manufacture polyurethane foams.
Also known as foam rubber, this plastic material, often manufactured from petroleum by-products, is extremely versatile within the industry and has multiple uses in the construction and automobile sectors as a sealant as well as ...
An international consortium of scientists, initiated by Reinhard Kienberger, Professor of Laser and X-ray Physics at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), several years ago, has made significant measurements in the femtosecond range at the U.S. Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC).
However, on these miniscule timescales, it is extremely difficult to synchronize the X-ray pulse that sparks a reaction in the sample on the one hand and the laser pulse which 'observes' it on the other. This problem is called timing jitter, and it is a major hurdle in ongoing ...
Researchers at Lund University in Sweden, in collaboration with colleagues in Dresden, Germany, have developed a way of combining a bone substitute and drugs to regenerate bone and heal severe fractures in the thigh or shin bone. The study, published in the research journal Science Advances, was conducted on rats, but the researchers think that the method in various combinations will soon be commonplace in clinical settings.
"The drugs and materials we used in the study for the regeneration of bone are already approved. We simply packaged them in a new combination. Therefore, there are no real obstacles to already using the method in clinical studies for certain major bone defects that are difficult to resolve in patients. But we want to ...
