France: Autism has become National cause

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http://www.autismegrandecause2012.fr/

I watched a program on France 2 mainstream TV channel about autism and asperger yesterday. The first part was a film called 'Le cerveau d'Hugo' that presented autisme and asperger through the life of a true character and interviewed several aspies about the subject. Loved it.
A debate called Autism: the french scandal followed.

French speakers can see the film here:

http://pluzz.francetv.fr/videos/le_cerv ... 50502.html

and the debate that followed:

http://pluzz.francetv.fr/videos/la_soir ... 50955.html

Sorry for non french speakers, but to me this is the proof of a coming change. Good news.

I caught part of it. He was also interviewed live on TV shortly before the program was aired. It was interesting to hear his opinions.

I'd like to see it, but I can't : it says that the video is unavailable in my territory...

I'm in France and if I want to watch american channels, I can bypass geoblock with special programs.

Thanks for your post.
I tried unsuccessfully to bypass, but I finally found the videos on youtube.
I'm not able to put the links, but it is possible to find the two videos by searching "Le cerveau d'Hugo" on the account of "Antoine autismevendee" on youtube.

I've managed to watch the film from England but didn't see the debate. The film will certainly raise awareness of what autism is and how it is currently addressed in France. But is anybody else worried that it will not be followed by concrete changes for the families? Telethon 2012 is coming up in France.It raises funds and awareness for genetic diseases in France, and is a very big French event where everybody gets involved (from the 3 year old school boy to big celebrities). It could be a great time to bring up the idea of an equivalent for Autism which would insure a more long term awareness of autism and something that will not be forgotten after 2012.I grew up in France and I truly believe that Telethon helps people not look at a person with a genetic disease as an oddity but just as a person who needs extra help.

That is what the debate was about, the journalist was extremely agressive towards the unefficiency of the government and the medical system. The officials were facing parents that either had raised their kids with proven smooth methods like ABA, or had to leave the country and go to belgium to give their kids a chance.
I grinned all the time listening to the shity excuses of the officials being destroyed by the journalist and the parents. All they can do now is improve.

if they are upstanding honest and well meaning peole, very very few people are.

most are perfectly okay, but in cases like this that simply wont be enough.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17583123

Yeah, I'd heard that psychoanalysis was still big in France. Looks like this may be changing now.

I have mixed feelings about it. Sucks for the parents to be blamed, but psychoanalysts tend to be a lot nicer to autistic kids than behaviorists. They actually looked at the kid as a whole person instead of just a collection of behaviors.

Well, hopefully they'll jump past behaviorism and go for cognitive psychology. That would be the best outcome. But then, even in other parts of the world (such as here in Canada, where the ASC worships Lovaas like a God) cognitive psychology approaches to autism aren't as common as they should be.

Wait NO. I'm french, both my son and I are autistic. Parents are not "just blamed", they are held responsible and thus measures are taken to ensure the child doesn't grow up in their"toxic family".
You would be amazed at the number of children who are growing up in psychiatric hospitals because their parents were thought to be the cause of their "psychosis".
It's not to be taken lightly, even in the case of my son who is 10 and verbal, being asked if "maybe mommy doesn't want him to leave and that's why he doesn't eat at school, would you think mommy would be very sad if you did?" posed a huge issue where i had to reassure him for a month straight that NO i wasn't sad when he left for school and that he HAD to go to school, i swear those people are toxic.
They want your child to "decide when he will want to talk" in the case of non verbal children for instance, so they just sit there and watch them play on the floor without talking for the whole session.
In the day centers, they put non verbal kids in very weird "pools of water" that are maybe a few inches deep and let them get naked, masturbate with the hose, poop in the water, ANYTHING without ever telling them it's inappropriate, they just nod and take sexually biased notes, and of course when the kids go home their parents have to teach them everything all over again.
They read sexually biased stories to them, it's all in code, and analysed later by those weird perverts.
They're not nice. They're a cult. They're scary as hell when you live in a system ruled by freud and lacan, i swear.

Would be interesting to get in touch with the journalist or the film maker, just to add a bit to their story (that sounded pretty neat compared to yours Ediself)

It's something that's not said out loud too much... but when you're part of a parent's association, you have cries for help coming in every day. Someone will tell you they feel a professional in a day center is acting weird and they want to distance themselves from them, and they get all kinds of advice on how to do it very carefully, ensuring they have backup psychiatrists/psychologists to avoid getting reported to CPS, someone else wants to tell the school's headmaster what they actually want to do for their child but they have to be extremely tactful and polite to avoid the same issue, another one has this school doctor taking charge of everything handicap related for the child when it's actually the parent's jobs to take care of this, because their child's education has to be their choice, but they don't know how to get rid of this person without getting reported........
It's a tiny bit nightmarish around here lol. They described mainly the lack of proper structures available and the fact that the professionals usually blame the mothers, but i think the issue i'm describing, completely related to the views on autism in france, is still a parallele that should be eradicated when awareness starts to grow (at least that's my hopes).
I'm not sure they wanted to take on the whole structure of france's national education as well as the psych lobby, it's a bit too much probably. Maybe we'll start talking about it in the media soon? As a separate subect?

Even in the U.S we have some of our share of problems were autism/aspergers is still being treated with primitive things such as electroshock therapy, were children are having shock belts on them and are being tortured with electricity to get the autism out.

What can be done about all this? It's not right not with the amount of research that has been done into autism in recent years.

Not actually changing. I produced and directed a documentary about the horrible way autism is treated in France. It will be coming out soon.

Click here: http://shamefuldocumentary.com