Follow-Up Studies

Mothers of children with autism or communication disorders: Successful adaptation and the double ABCX model

“…Parents of these children report more stress than parents of children with other types of handicaps (Holroyd & McArthur, 1976). Although rates of institutionalization of handicapped persons have been declining, many families of autistic and autisticlike children still face such a family crisis, with estimated rates of institutionalization of autistic individuals ranging from 8% (Schopier, Mesibov, DeVellis, & Short, 1981) to 74% (Lotter, 1978). Even very recent studies (DeMyer & Goldberg, 1983) indicate that one-third of a treated group of autistic children were in residential placement before age 14 and two-thirds in residential placement after that age.…”

“…Problems in adaptation and family crises such as divorce or marital problems (Bristol, Schopier, & McConnaughey, 1984;Love, 1973;Price-Bonham & Addison, 1978), depression (Bradshaw & Lawton, 1978;Burden, 1980;Cummings, Bayley, & Rie, 1966;DeMyer, 1979;Tew & Laurence, 1975), and institutionalization (DeMyer & Goldberg, 1983;Lotter, 1978;Rutter, 1970) in these families have been documented.…”

Life Course Health Development in Autism Spectrum Disorders

“…These factors may account, in part, for the substantial variability reported in adult outcomes for people with ASD. As noted previously, although psychosocial outcomes have generally been poor, there is a trend over time for higher rates of improvement (see Table 1 -description of how the outcome categories were defined is provided below; Beadle- Brown et al 2002;Billstedt et al 2005Billstedt et al , 2007Billstedt et al , 2011Eaves and Ho 2008;Farley et al 2009;Gillberg 1991;Hofvander et al 2009;Howlin 1998;Howlin et al 2004;Kobayashi et al 1992;Rutter 1969, 1970;Lotter 1978;Lovaas 1987;Nordin and Gillberg 1998;Szatmari et al 1989). Studies conducted from the 1950s to 1970s reported that less than 15% of individuals had good/very good outcomes and the majority had poor/very poor outcomes (Eisenberg 1956;Lotter 1974).…”

“…Some have reported that childhood verbal IQ is a better predictor of later functioning than performance IQ (Billstedt et al 2005;Lord and Bailey 2002), whereas another study found neither to be a consistent prognostic indicator (Howlin et al 2004). In addition, the presence of good early language skills before age 5-6 is crucial for positive outcome in ASD (Billstedt et al 2007;Gillberg and Steffenberg 1987;Gillespie-Lynch et al 2012;Lockyer and Rutter 1969;Lotter 1978;Szatmari et al 2003). Mawhood et al (2000) have shown that individuals who tended to have better linguistic outcome in adulthood were functioning at a higher cognitive level more generally.…”

“…Some studies report that individuals diagnosed in childhood continue to meet criteria for the disorder at follow-up (Billstedt et al 2005;Cederlund et al 2008;Howlin et al 2004;Lotter 1978); whereas others report a change in diagnosis or movement "off" the spectrum in some individuals (Daniels et al 2011;Kleinman et al 2008;Turner and Stone 2007). Two recent studies reported that a diagnosis of autism was reasonably stable, whereas for other forms of ASD such as pervasive developmental disorder, the results were more variable (Rondeau et al 2011;Woolfenden et al 2012).…”