Autism spectrum disorders (ASD), neurological disorders that begin early in childhood, persisting throughout adulthood and affect crucial areas of the child’s development like communication, social interaction and patterns of behaviour, require specialised care.
Persons trained in teaching both the affected child and the parents are needed. Though there is a need for trained persons — psychiatrists (behavioural therapists), speech therapists, occupational therapists and others — to work together they mostly do freelance work. Parents with children having autism, anxiety disorders, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), mental retardation and other comorbid (existing simultaneously with and usually independently of another medical condition) diseases have to run from pillar to post to get the services of trained personnel.
The Vijayawada Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (VIMHANS) has established a Children’s Guidance Centre making available all the therapists under one roof. Manjiri Deshpande, DNB in psychiatry and head of the Guidance Centre, says that such guidance centres cater to both the mentally ill by offering Behavioural Therapy sessions and children who have trouble coping sociologically and psychologically.
The mere administration of medication would not help the children. They had to be taught behaviour.
Citing the example of children with temper tantrums, Dr Manjiri says that parents too had to be taught how they should behave when their child exhibits a temper tantrum. The child should be introduced to a system in which it is rewarded for proper behaviour, she said.
The guidance centres also catered to the “wellness” of the children. Children who were unable to face different types of stresses, anxieties and relationship problems would also be helped with counselling, she said. This was a boon to the city and all its satellite towns, she said.
Parents have to be taught how they should behave when their child exhibits a temper tantrum
Dr. Manjiri Deshpande
Head, Children’s Guidance Centre
