Autism, Childhood Schizophrenia and Culture: A Critical Review of the Literature

Abstract

Although sociocultural variations in the distribution of adult schizophrenia are quite widely recognized today, the situation respecting childhood schizophrenia and infantile autism is much less clear, in part due to the considerable ambiguity regarding the classification of childhood psychoses which has existed since the latter part of the nineteenth century when psychiatrists began to discuss the existence of such states. As the important categories used today carg-y either an autistic or a schizophrenic connotation, this paper will use the single term childhood schizophrenia to cover all serious disturbances of early childhood which are considered to be of a psychotic nature while the term autism will be used to refer only to children with specific symptoms such as those described by Kanner and Eisenberg (1955), including extr eme self-isolation and the obsessive insistence on sameness. These two diagnostic criteria are the sources from which the other clinical classifications are derived. It is to be noted that the labels &dquo;childhood psychosis,&dquo; &dquo;childhood schizophrenia,&dquo; and 11 infantile autism&dquo; are used interchangeably by many researchers. This has resulted in contr adictory findings by various investigators.Probably the first recognition of psychosis in children was by DeSanctis (1908) who used the term &dquo;dementia praecocissima&dquo; to designate a psychotic condition found in feeble-minded children in Italy. However the term did not gain wide acceptance. For a time the condition was confused with Heller's disease, which was later found to be due to an acute degeneration of ganglion cells, and it was not until the early 1930s that a link was established between this childhood disorder and the clinical picture of schizophrenia or dementia praecox as described by Kraepelin and Bleuler. As the condition became the target of serious study, researchers such as

Multicultural Issues in Autism

“…Although most researchers ignore race, some have challenged the claim of universality of autism among races, reporting a low incidence of autism in many Latin American countries (e.g., Peru, Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela) and in several developing countries such as Kenya, India, and Hungary (Sanua, 1981a(Sanua, , 1981b(Sanua, , 1984. Sanua hypothesized that autism is more prevalent in Western, highly technological countries, where the nuclear rather than the extended family is predominant.…”

Serving the needs of immigrant families of children with autism

“…At least one researcher, however, has hypothesized that autism is more prevalent in first world countries (Sauna, 1981(Sauna, , 1984. Advances in the fields of genetics and neurobiology and recent large-scale epidemiological studies have countered that notion by stating that prevalence is based on biological etiologies rather than demographic variables (Fombonne et al, 2001).…”

Víctor D. Sanua (1920-2009) y la Sociedad Interamericana de Psicología

“…El autismo infantil, como ya hemos señalado, fue asimismo una de sus áreas de mayor interés expresado por numerosas publicaciones (e. g. Sanua, 1981aSanua, , 1984aSanua, , 1984bSanua, , 1986aSanua, , 1986bSanua, , 1987Sanua, , 1989, siendo el editor de Interamerican Newsletter of Infantile Autism. En esta misteriosa área de la psicopatología, Sanua formuló el planteamiento (en el mejor de los casos, muy controversial cuando no rechazado; véase Feinstein, 2010, Bakare & Munir, 2011) de que el autismo infantil era una enfermedad propia de la civilización occidental, teniendo mayor frecuencia en países de alto desarrollo tecnológico y en los cuales predominaba la familia nuclear, al mismo tiempo que sostenía, como Kanner (1943;véase además Sanua, 1990), que aparecía en familias de ingresos económicos más elevados.…”

“…Victor D. Sanua (El Cairo, Egipto, 22 de julio de 1920 -New York, Estados Unidos de Nortamérica, 12 de julio del 2009) tuvo a su cargo diferentes funciones en la SIP entre 1957 y 1974. Con posterioridad, se fue concentrando paulatinamente en estudios e investigaciones referidas de un lado al autismo (e. g. Sanua, 1981aSanua, , 1981cSanua, , 1983c, y, del otro, a la psicología y psicopatología (Sanua, 1981b), sociología (Sanua, , 2006b e identidad del pueblo judío (Sanua, 1995c), y asimismo en reflexiones de naturaleza autobiográfica (Sanua, 1983a). Esto último debe ser uno de los motivos por los cuales su nombre es poco recordado entre los psicólogos en esta parte del mundo, a pesar de su valioso aporte institucional.…”