Wes­ley Gib­bings

Trinidad and To­ba­go is at least "30 to 40 years" be­hind coun­tries such as the Unit­ed King­dom when it comes to ad­dress­ing the ed­u­ca­tion needs of per­sons af­fect­ed by autism.Some af­fect­ed per­sons, one ex­pert ar­gues, al­so need­less­ly oc­cu­py space at the St Ann's Psy­chi­atric Hos­pi­tal.These con­clu­sions come from autism spe­cial­ist, Meghan Lee-Wa­ter­man, who is be­hind an up­com­ing sem­i­nar on autism aware­ness and the avail­abil­i­ty of "ben­e­fi­cial ther­a­pies" in T&T.

"In com­par­i­son to the UK, we are 30 to 40 years be­hind in our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem for spe­cial needs," Lee-Wa­ter­man told the Guardian."In the last decade or so there has been in­creased in­ter­est in de­vel­op­ing train­ing pro­grammes in spe­cial ed­u­ca­tion," she added, "but there is still a need for ex­pe­ri­enced and qual­i­fied teach­ers to run these pro­grammes."

On­ly last week, the US Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion (CDC) re­leased sta­tis­tics show­ing that autism now af­fects one in 68 Amer­i­can chil­dren.Autism is de­fined by the ex­perts as a com­plex brain dis­or­der char­ac­terised by dif­fi­cul­ties in so­cial in­ter­ac­tion, ver­bal and non-ver­bal com­mu­ni­ca­tion and repet­i­tive be­hav­iours.

"Un­for­tu­nate­ly," Wa­ter­man-Lee said, "we do not have any sta­tis­tics on the num­ber of per­sons with autism liv­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go." Knowl­edge of this, she said, was im­por­tant be­cause "the greater the pro­mo­tion of aware­ness, the greater the chance of ear­ly in­ter­ven­tion in terms of ed­u­ca­tion and ther­a­pies.""This con­di­tion not on­ly af­fects the in­di­vid­ual but al­so the fam­i­ly mem­bers as their lives will per­ma­nent­ly be af­fect­ed and changed," Wa­ter­man-Lee said.

"I sus­pect many cas­es of in­di­vid­u­als with autism have been grave­ly mis­di­ag­nosed over the years thus fill­ing up the psy­chi­atric ward in St Ann's," she added. "With bet­ter aware­ness comes the in­creased chance to help those di­ag­nosed and to strive to as­sist them to be­come as in­de­pen­dent as pos­si­ble."

"In a coun­try like Trinidad and To­ba­go," the autism ex­pert said, "there is a great need to pro­mote autism aware­ness as there is a vast lack of un­der­stand­ing about this neu­ro­log­i­cal con­di­tion which af­fects chil­dren of any and every eth­nic back­ground."World Autism Aware­ness Day is be­ing ob­served on Wednes­day.

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Wa­ter­man-Lee says she hopes Sat­ur­day's sem­i­nar, en­ti­tled "The Miss­ing Puz­zle Piece", will as­sist in rais­ing aware­ness among a wide cross-sec­tion of pro­fes­sion­als and oth­er cit­i­zens on the is­sue of autism.It takes place from 8 a.m. at Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel in St Ann's and in­cludes pre­sen­ta­tions by spe­cial­ists such as Drs Jas­mine Roop­nar­ine and Prith Ba­hadurs­ingh, Anal­isa Wit­tet, Gean Marie Shep­pard, Donel­la Ro­driguez-Laird, Sir­lon George, Jeanne Sab­ga-Aboud and Stephanie Llanos.

�2 In­ter­est­ed per­sons can con­tact Lee-Wa­ter­man at 299-4297 or Ro­driguez-Laird at 678-1793.