Illness Narrative:
The experiential approach of anthropological medicine is the approach that deals with the patient and how they feel about having the illness. The experiential approach is how the patient with the disease/illness feels about it, talks about it, and lives with it. This approach is beneficial when discussing and researching autism because people with autism have differences in brain development and physical function than people without the disease. It is important to take into consideration the narrative story of how the person diagnosed with autism feels about the disease. When I was entering my freshman year in high school, my French teacher had a baby. After around 12 months, she noticed he wasn't developing and acting properly. He was tested and finally diagnosed with autism. Before this, I had heard of autism a number of times before, however, I had never met anyone that had autism or really even knew what exactly it entailed. Before meeting her son, my impression was that autistic people just developed more slowly than others. After researching further, I have learned that a clinical definition of autism is the intellectual disability, difficulties in motor coordination and attention and physical health issues such as sleep and gastrointestinal disturbances. Some persons with ASD excel in visual skills, music, math and art. (Autism Speaks). My teacher's son, Landon, definitely seemed a little slower than other kids his age. Throughout high school, I became very close with Landon as his babysitter and his mother and learned about his life and how they deal with him having autism. He had difficulty playing with other kids on the playground as he had physical deficits, and found extreme entertainment in random things he would become obsessed with. He loved the claw machines with the stuffed animals and toys in them at Meijer and Wal-Mart, and we would take him there every day if we had time. He loved watching youtube videos of "the claw," as he called it. The picture in the top left is a picture I took babysitting Landon and his neighbors, when I took them to the claw and he won all of those toys. As he has gotten older, he has learned to live a more normal life but there are instances where you can still see the autism in Landon. I consider Landon's story to be mostly a quest narrative. As a child, his autism was so severe. But as he has gotten older and attended therapy sessions to improve his cognitive and physical developments, he almost seems like a normal kid continuing on the journey of life trying to better himself everyday. When he was initially diagnosed, my teacher was overwhelmed with sadness and confusion, but after years of treatment and therapy his autism is almost unnoticeable. For an anthropological perspective, I believe it is extremely important especially in cases like this dealing with autistic patients, to understand and listen to an illness narrative of the patient in order to better understand what they are going through and help them seek the best treatment option available to them. Below is another picture of Landon and all of his claw toys he has collected, showing how sometimes children/patients with autism bond to certain activities and become extremely good at them!
The experiential approach of anthropological medicine is the approach that deals with the patient and how they feel about having the illness. The experiential approach is how the patient with the disease/illness feels about it, talks about it, and lives with it. This approach is beneficial when discussing and researching autism because people with autism have differences in brain development and physical function than people without the disease. It is important to take into consideration the narrative story of how the person diagnosed with autism feels about the disease. When I was entering my freshman year in high school, my French teacher had a baby. After around 12 months, she noticed he wasn't developing and acting properly. He was tested and finally diagnosed with autism. Before this, I had heard of autism a number of times before, however, I had never met anyone that had autism or really even knew what exactly it entailed. Before meeting her son, my impression was that autistic people just developed more slowly than others. After researching further, I have learned that a clinical definition of autism is the intellectual disability, difficulties in motor coordination and attention and physical health issues such as sleep and gastrointestinal disturbances. Some persons with ASD excel in visual skills, music, math and art. (Autism Speaks). My teacher's son, Landon, definitely seemed a little slower than other kids his age. Throughout high school, I became very close with Landon as his babysitter and his mother and learned about his life and how they deal with him having autism. He had difficulty playing with other kids on the playground as he had physical deficits, and found extreme entertainment in random things he would become obsessed with. He loved the claw machines with the stuffed animals and toys in them at Meijer and Wal-Mart, and we would take him there every day if we had time. He loved watching youtube videos of "the claw," as he called it. The picture in the top left is a picture I took babysitting Landon and his neighbors, when I took them to the claw and he won all of those toys. As he has gotten older, he has learned to live a more normal life but there are instances where you can still see the autism in Landon. I consider Landon's story to be mostly a quest narrative. As a child, his autism was so severe. But as he has gotten older and attended therapy sessions to improve his cognitive and physical developments, he almost seems like a normal kid continuing on the journey of life trying to better himself everyday. When he was initially diagnosed, my teacher was overwhelmed with sadness and confusion, but after years of treatment and therapy his autism is almost unnoticeable. For an anthropological perspective, I believe it is extremely important especially in cases like this dealing with autistic patients, to understand and listen to an illness narrative of the patient in order to better understand what they are going through and help them seek the best treatment option available to them. Below is another picture of Landon and all of his claw toys he has collected, showing how sometimes children/patients with autism bond to certain activities and become extremely good at them!
Citations:
"What Is Autism?." Autism Speaks. http://www.autismspeaks.org/what-autism (accessed July 29, 2014).
"What Is Autism?." Autism Speaks. http://www.autismspeaks.org/what-autism (accessed July 29, 2014).