To assess the magnitude of autism spectrum disorder in Jharkhand by M-CHAT-R as a screening tool

Abstract

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder which is a clinically heterogenous condition with a wide range of etiological factors and causing significant public health burden. If diagnosed at an earlier age, early interventions can be started this leads to functional outcome of children with ASD with respect to social, behavior and occupational sphere. Therefore, early detection and intervention are widely recommended in these children. So screening of toddlers who were identified to be “at risk” can be diagnosed using screening questionnaires by interviewing parents. Overall with this study we can conclude that, toddlers identified to be “at risk” and those diagnosed with ASD were not uncommon and M-CHAT-R is a useful screening test for the identification of “at risk” toddlers for Autism Spectrum Disorder in Jharkhand.