Autism Society links with NMPASI

The Autism Society of the CNMI met for their first meeting of the year at the NM Protection & Advocacy Systems, Inc. office on Pale Arnold Rd. on Saipan to collaborate with NMPASI’s administration of the Hope Center, a parents’ center launched by the Developmental Disabilities Council. The Society and NMPASI will jointly run the parent’s assistance, training and information center.

The Society was organized as a support group for parents of children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder, a condition that has grown into epidemic proportion in the last twenty years.

Local medical care provider Dr. Adrian Bren who was present at the meeting revealed last year that his practice identified more than double the number of children diagnosed the previous year, a whopping 16 compared to last year’s 6.

Twenty years ago, what used to be an incidence of one per 10,000 persons nationally has now become one per 166 persons by the Center for Disease Control statistics. The alarming discovery of the same trend in the CNMI has burdened the public and private educational institutions and assistance agencies in providing the necessary interventions to alleviate the anxieties and depressions resulting in a disease of still indeterminate origin, and of no known ‘cure’.

Susanne Lizama, acting Special Education coordinator for the Public School System, added her professional concerns over the absence of any social net beyond the educational option not only for children diagnosed with autism but also for all disabilities.

Diagnosis for autism involves three verifiable indicators, which can trigger immediate referral to a care provider: 1) unresponsiveness to relating to others, e.g., a child’s ignoring someone’s calls, or avoidance of looking someone in the eye, 2) a verbal and behavioral decline in communication skills, noted by absence of words or gesture to indicate needs and wants, or failing to form the sounds universally associated with parents (dada/nana), and 3) a defined adherence to repetitive behavior such as circling an object, or doing the same action over and over again.

A number of marketed interventions have also proliferated in recent years, from the esoteric to the mundane, the exotic to the commonsense ordinary. Parents John and Marissa Guerrero, active in bringing ASD to the attention of the public, noted the number of advertised “cures.” With the passed legislation for the establishment of a two-year Commission on Autism awaiting the Governor’s signature, the couple lamented the snail’s pace of public response to an overwhelming epidemic.

Without falling into cynicism and despair, Vince and Bobbie Macfalen parent on to guide their child through the demands of college education, resolving that their efforts will focus on their child’s desire and ambition, wherever bliss leads.

James Rayphand of NMPASI is shepherding the institutional processes that will undergird the two groups’ collaboration. While a firm practitioner of the legal and formal forms of protection and advocacy in service to NMPASI’s clientele, educator Rayphand also recognizes the invaluable role of the “soft” technologies brought about when people of the same predicament synergistically gather together to address their common concern. He hopes that the Parent Center will institutionalize practices that will allow families with members diagnosed with disabilities to be able to meet their own requirements.

Larisa Larson, known to be a quiet activist and efficient convener of people around issues relating to autism, serves as the Society’s secretary. Through her efforts, the group will intensify the engagement of Autism Society members (as well as those involved previously in the autism groups of PACA and STaRPO) in making themselves available as neighborly resources particularly to new families who may have just been handed the label “autism” to a member of their family.

For further information, contact the NMPASI office at 235-7273/4.[B][I] (Jaime Vergara)[/I][/B]