Why You Should Avoid Unproven Treatments for Autistic Children?
Posted on 23. Mar, 2011 by Matthew Hallett in Mental Health
An ideal treatment for child with autism should be:
• Effective in most, if not all children
• Quick
• Curative and doesn’t just improve specific symptoms
• Easy to administer (as injection or pill)
• Inexpensive (minimal costs or free, if possible)
• Risk free or have minimal side effects
At this moment, no autism treatment can achieve all the above characteristics simultaneously and even the most promising one can still fall short from being perfect. In addition, prolonged intensive treatment with unexplored basis may leave autistic children with additional, unintended impairments. Unfortunately, many parents are eager to find quick, effective treatments for their autistic children, as the result they are relatively more vulnerable into trying unproven therapies. We may argue that there could be minimal risks in trying new treatments. However, the undesired effects can be quite harmful.
Here are some compelling reasons that can make you more cautious:
Expenses: Even a free treatment comes with costs. Even if practitioners do not charge a fee for their treatments, there are costs parents may need to incur while trying unproven treatments:
• Indirect financial costs: Unproven treatments can quite expensive, for example, if the treatment center is located 1000 miles from your home, you still need to spend a lot of money. Unproven treatments take money away from proven, more effective ones or other important financial obligations in the family, such as education, insurance and mortgage. When you use unproven therapies, it is harder to determine when substantial improvements will occur. Without enough information, parents may tend to continue the therapy long after it pasts the point of being effective. Parents can be encouraged by the hope that their children will eventually be improved, and they keep on spending money even after the chance of success is already slim. Consequently, unproven treatments can add extra costs to households with autistic children.
• Psychological costs: Parents who seek dramatic cures using unproven treatments are often disappointed. Some treatments are advertised with much fanfare and they turn out to be highly ineffective. As the results, family members of autistic children can be unnecessarily cynical or depressed about new therapies, even when they are legitimately approved by major, government-backed health organizations.
• Opportunity costs: The resources and time parents spend on unproven therapies could be spent on interventions with bigger chances of success. For example, some behavioral modification techniques, like applied behavioral analysis, are well-received by experts. However, if parents focus too much on ineffective and unproven therapies, the “golden moment” can be lost.
Physical harms: It may come from unproven behavioral, dietary and pharmacological interventions. FDA records show cases of substances that were previously thought to be useful and cause no dangerous side effects, but turned out to be dangerous and risky. For example, the use of dexfenfluramine and fenfluramine as diet drugs can cause heart valve damage, while thalidomide, a fertility drug, may cause birth defects. Some practitioners recommend the use of dimethylglycine (DMG) and secretin for autism treatments. Unfortunately, their effects are unknown and have not been properly investigated.
Unproven interventions that involve behavioral techniques may not appear to be risky, but they can still cause some harm. For example, some therapies encourage parents to physically punish children to reduce the amount of improper behaviors. However, continuous punishments may cause children to be more vulnerable to abuse, especially if autistic children fail to relate their behaviors with physical punishments. Overly intense or restrictive behavioral interventions may make autistic children to become more frustrated and increase their autistic behaviors, which may cause a vicious, unending circle.
Other practitioners, use dietary interventions which involve restricted diet (for example, gluten-free diet), which can deprive autistic children of important nutrients. On the other hand, vitamin and mineral supplements therapies can lead to sickness, especially when high doses are taken regularly. Many autistic children are picky eaters and tend to limit their diet to certain food items, which do not constitute a complete nutritious, balanced diet. It is important for parents to implement nutritious and balanced diet, to ensure higher probability of success in autism treatments. Older children are able to reach pantry cabinets and open the refrigerator, consequently it is more difficult for parents to set a healthy diet plan. Further, it is more difficult to encourage autistic children to exercise safely. Parents should discuss with licensed dieticians and pediatricians to design a proper diet for a child with autism. For some parents, common recommendations from experts do not seem to offer a quick way out. Today, there are still no solid scientific evidences that support any diet treatment to cure behavioral symptoms on autistic children.
Of course, not all new treatments are scams concocted by charlatans. Some treatments are well-researched and developed by reputable experts or experienced specialists. Even so, parents should see unproven treatments warily. At first, it may help an autistic child, yet after a few years, it may not be effective or may even be risky. Without subjecting a treatment to scientific scrutiny, practitioners shouldn’t make any statement about the its safety or effectiveness. A proper scientific scrutiny should be performed by objective researchers and involve two large groups of autistic children. Both groups should share as many as similar characteristics, for example, age group and type of disability. One group is given an intervention that is being tested, such as nutritional supplements, medications and diet plan. The other group will receive placebo pill or sham treatment. The participating autistic children, parents and examining doctors are not allowed to know whether they get the real treatment or not. After the trial is completed, each child is evaluated and researchers would compare results between “active treatment” group and placebo group. If there are no noticeable differences between both groups, the treatment is considered to be ineffective. A proven treatment should indicate significant improvements in the “active treatment” groups. This experiment method is approved by the FDA to test new drugs and treatments; and widely known as randomized double-blind trial.
