Autism Awareness in Bangladesh

Dilara Begum : In Bangladesh 13 ministries have been involved to reduce the risk of autism. Initiatives include increase autism awareness by eliminating superstition, and increase appropriate and effective treatment methods for the people with autism, said Ms. Sima Wazed while she delivered speech on autism at United Nation Organization on April 2^nd, 2015, chairman of advisory committee of autism and one of the strong proponent of educational reforms for autism community of Bangladesh. Autism is a life long disability that affects three major parts of the brain characterized by extremely deviant behavior including failure to develop social relationship, language delay and deviance, hyperactivity, tactile defensiveness, stereotypes and insistence on the preservation of sameness. Although, it is an authentic idea involving 13 government ministries for the development of autism society, involvement of pediatrician, child psychologist, school psychologist, social worker, related services team, behavior analyst, special education teacher, and school counselor is more significant to provide scientific evidence based treatment method in both academic and behavioral domains of children with autism. For creating awareness for the parents of autism, the pediatricians’ role is important. By using age appropriate child developmental milestone check list the patricians find out child’s deficits skills on overall developmental domains includes cognitive, language-communication, motors, sensory, social-emotional, academic,  and adaptive behavior skills and may help parents to understand  about the age appropriate steps of developmental milestones’. Department of pediatrics may distribute flyer or publish parents magazine to create autism awareness. Parents who have a child with disability also may participate in autism awareness seminar and ABA training to cope with this problematic issue. Minimum 11 sessions ABA training is required for the teachers/teacher aids and related services team who work with students with autism on:  health and safety, baseline and preference assessment procedure, errorless/treatment method, implement reinforcement therapy, functional assessment and functional analysis includes DRO, DRA and DRI trials methods, replacement behavior, task analysis (behavior chain), method of data collection procedure for each particular deficit area, creating behavior modification plan, maintenance, skip, and picture exchange communication system (PECS). The teachers of special education program also requires training on writing individual education plan/goals (IEP), creating curriculum and   lesson plan by following the rules and procedures of IEP objective, discrete trials, and incidental teaching methods.

In this conference the speakers also brought an issue on employment opportunities for individuals with autism. In this context, I think the role of the school guidance counselor’s is important.  To improve students’ academic, social-emotional and behavioral skills, and decrease students’ sufferings from any particular disorder the school counselor provide individual and group counseling sessions for the students with disabilities. Therefore, the school counselor follows a dynamic leadership style that helps students to build their future life span plan for higher education and career opportunities based on their interest, ability and intelligence.  The school counselor involves students in voluntary work in local community based organization, restaurant, and departmental store to improve students’ self-esteem and interpersonal relationship skills.

In USA, still there is a huge gap between scholar and practitioner in the field of applied behavior analysis. That’s the reason in some cases application of the ABA method is scattered and skewed. Discrete trials teaching method is consisted with some particular rules to increase or decrease the target behavior, but some teacher aids/therapists sometimes fails to follow these rules, as a result the data does not match with students’ skills and mastery criteria. As the people of multicultural divergent community are increasing in the USA, the lack of bilingual teaching method in all areas is one of the vital barriers for the improvement of autism. Teachers/therapist has to have the quality of skills that includes patience, sympathy, and empathy to work with students with autism, otherwise the academic and behavioral improvement of students with autism will not take appropriate place.

I am proud of Ms, Sima Wazed for her unique endeavor to open a door for the students with autism of Bangladesh. To create a positive social change in Bangladesh I may contribute my effort by providing training on autism and ABA program. As there is no language barrier in Bangladesh, if the researchers take initiative to translate some important mechanisms/contents in Bangla, I believe that Bangladesh would be able to reach the target goals for the development of autism community very effectively.