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News › Autism linked to parents with high level of education
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Various Articles: Autism linked to parents with high level of education
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Posted by sylvia on Wednesday, November 09, 2005 (10:26:42)
Telegraph September 2005
By Sarah Womack
Parents of autistic children tend to be more highly qualified than parents of children with other mental problems, according to a controversial study for the Department of Health.
It also links a wide range of "clinically recognisable" mental health problems in youngsters to divorce and family breakdown.
The study of 7,977 children found that one in 10 children between the ages of five and 16 had a mental disorder.
But unlike children with more common disorders, autistic children had better educated parents: 46 per cent had parents with qualifications above GCSE compared with 35 per cent of other children.
Autistic children were also less likely to live in poor families: only nine per cent compared with 20 per cent of other children lived in homes with a weekly income of less than £200 per week.
They were, however, similar to the other children in that many lived in families where neither parent worked.
The study, by the Office for National Statistics, said the unusual combination of high educational status and low economic activity among parents of autistic children "reflects their heavy caring responsibilities".
The ONS's report confirms findings from the first national survey in 1999 which recorded the same number of children with a mental disorder.
In 2004, four per cent of children had an emotional disorder (anxiety or depression), six per cent had a conduct disorder (aggressive, anti-social or disruptive behaviour), two per cent had Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and one per cent had a less common disorder, such as autism, an eating disorder or selective mutism. Around two per cent of children had more than one type.
The study was carried out to find out whether mental disorders were on the increase, and to look in more detail at children with autistic spectrum disorder.
Boys were more likely to have a mental disorder than girls. Among 5- 10-year-olds, 10 per cent of boys and five per cent of girls had a mental disorder. Among 11- 16-year-olds, the proportions were 13 per cent for boys and 10 per cent for girls.
The prevalence of mental disorders was also greater among children and young people in certain families, such as lone parent families (16 per cent) compared with two-parent families (eight per cent) and in step-families (14 per cent) compared with those with no stepchildren (nine per cent).
Dinah Morley, deputy director of Young Minds, the children's mental health charity, said the figures were a wake-up call to the "tremendous cost" of divorce.
"We can't turn the clock back to a time when all children stayed with their birth families," she said.
"But we can start to be more aware that these things that adults do impact very deeply on children. I think it is a wake-up call to adults to be more aware when they decide to divorce of the tremendous cost to the children. It is important for society to think how in the future it is going to support children better."
However statisticians emphasised that while there was a link between divorce and mental health problems in children, it was not clear whether the divorce followed the diagnosis of the mental problem or whether it may have triggered it in some way.
They added that mental health problems in children were also more common where the parent had no educational qualifications (17 per cent) compared with those who had a degree (four per cent) and where a parent was an unskilled manual worker (15 per cent) compared to a doctor or lawyer (four per cent).
One per cent of children aged 5-16 had autistic spectrum disorder.
The majority - 82 per cent - were boys. Almost all the children had a physical complaint as well (89 per cent compared with 54 per cent of other children).
Tim Loughton, the shadow health minister, said: "The Government urgently needs to make it easier to identify problems early on in schools and to provide appropriate treatment, that does not mean admission to adult wards or excessive reliance on the ''chemical cosh of drugs".
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Posted by sylvia on Wednesday, November 09, 2005 (10:26:42) (1236 reads)
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