Programme to help autistic people lead normal life

AUTISTIC individuals and others with learning disabilities have 30 to 40 per cent chance of living a normal life provided they undergo an intensive Applied Behaviour Analysis intervention programme, an expert and analyst on behavioural psychologist said.

In an interview with The Brunei Times, Dr Douglas Lee who was in the country recently as an invited speaker in a seminar organised by the Special Education Unit, Ministry of Education, said that this was an enormous increase where previously it was virtually zero.

"Even for the children that do not quite make it that far, had made huge personal gains. Applied Behavioural Analyst caters for all," he added.

Dr Lee said that the programme is widely used in all sectors that deal with any form of disabilities. He cited the lumber industry, sports psychology and businesses as examples.

"Applied Behaviour Analysis has nothing to do with age. What you do, of course, can be different with different individuals with different disabilities,"he said adding that his youngest patients was a two-year-old while the oldest was in his 70s.

Applied Behaviour Analysis was created and developed independently from autism, it just happen that it is effective in intervention programme for autism.

In his presentation during the seminar on "Behavioural intervention for children with autism and other learning difficulties"early this month, he said that the seminar was just an introduction. There was no skill development taking place.

"If we are going to go further with the teachers, there is a need to set up a platform where we can actually test the teachers' knowledge on handling learning disabilities. If they passed, then we can actually start moving into competency assessment. From there, it will help increase the teachers' confidence level to the point where we can train these people to train others," he said.

He said Brunei have the appropriate support group for families to seek help for children with autism and other learning disabilities, however there is need to develop more support and structure to support it.

"Parents now are doing a great job of getting people interested and focused," he said.

He pointed out that the intervention programme is scientifically proven method of treatment with assured positive results.

"The results achieved by Applied Behaviour Analysis provided a reason for funding the research," Dr Lee said.

The programme started off with the idea that one way to look at a problem is to look at the person's behaviour. From there, there is a need to investigate the behaviour in great depth, focus on a specific behaviour that seems to be a part of the problem and see whether that could help in solving the problem.

The programme, he said, has a very different way of looking at the same problem, and it was important to develop a focus on behavioural development, than curriculum development. He added that focusing on skills and behaviour as core issues would help in the overall treatment. (RSH1) The Brunei Times