Autism

My first exposure to Autism was Mr. Hen. Mr Hens was a 50-year-old man who was diagnosed at USC when he was a child but his parents believed that if they ignored the diagnosis and treated him like a “normal” child that he would grow up to be “Normal”. They were endlessly frustrated at his easy fixations, his robotic speech, inability to have typical social interactions and eventually they shunned him.

By the time I met Mr. Hen he was homeless and living on Skid Row. I tool him to Downtown Mental Health for evaluation and the therapist told him that he was retarded. Imagine a very ugly scene of a very angry Sonya screaming at a psychiatrist and filing complaints and a very shocked Mr. Hen. I took him to Lanterman Regional Center and he was evaluated again and for the second time in his life he was diagnosed with Autism…