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Special thanks to Asperger's Conversations' listener Rachelle who sends me this music video parody:
http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=2674025
Which reminds us all to have a sense of humour about what it means to be "geeky" or "nerdy." We talk about neurodiversity as a guiding concept, but sometimes its good just to chuckle, isn't it?
A couple months ago I visited my friend and former Internship supervisor, Lowell T. Anderson, Ph.D., who is a senior psychologist at New York's Bellevue Hospital and Associate Professor at NYU Medical Center. We talked about his 30 years of cultivating a Behavior Clinic at Bellevue where he trains medical residents and psychology interns in the brief delivery of advice for a range of behavioral and psychological problems. Terry has published articles in the areas of childhood Autism, Lesch-Nyhan Disease, as well as ABA and operant analysis of behavior. Terry always drops pearls of wisdom and this visit was no different...where he manages to "diss" his own field (he told me that "Behaviorism has made little contribution to psychotherapy") while at the same time still encouraging people to change if it is possible.
Click on the MP3 file below to hear today's podcast: Download TerryAnderson.mp3 (9mins,32sec; 3.27MB)
Alan Becker's latest video raises interesting questions about subject vs. author and even persuades us to ask what the difference is between our computer and ourselves. As we watch many of our kids with autism spectrum issues "become one with the computer" we might wonder if they are "ahead of the game" rather than suffering from some social disease.
The recent move by the Florida legislature to require insurance companies to pay for evidence based treatments for autism is a good one for parents and kids. Insurance companies in the U.S. are simply "middle men" and "paper pushers" who care nothing about the well being of its' customers and only care about making money. I have blogged about how my own Insurance Company has betrayed my own interests on numerous occasions, and my conversations with my colleagues on campus reveal that I'm not alone!
Here in Keene, NH we have ramped up early childhood autism services by training lots of college students in ABA and related approaches, but still it's hard to get affected kids enough program time. Insurance companies will say they are interested in supporting evidence-based treatments, but in fact mostly respond to outside pressures (e.g., no problem in getting reimbursed for non-evidence based chiropractic procedures, but trouble getting reimbursed for "real" medical procedures at major medical centers). So here's my question for Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare Insurance Company: Will you provide reimbursement, up to $36,000, for evidence based ABA procedures for early childhood autism? Probably not...let the kid move to Florida...or get "adjusted" instead.
Sarcasm aside, let's be happy about the Florida decision.
