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Health - Lost for words
http://www.sundayherald.com/12326
THE day Cailan Stillie picked up a leaf, he
made his mother, Patricia, very proud. The five-year-old from Lanark is
autistic, his condition manifesting itself in difficulties with verbal
communication and attention span. He also has sensory issues and usually
can't bear to get his hands wet or dirty. Yet, after four days undergoing a
treatment called Auditory Integration Training (AIT), a controversial
listening therapy, Cailan lifted a fallen autumn leaf from the ground and,
holding it out to his mother, said "Wow, look mum. Beautiful".
Patricia first learned of AIT therapy on the internet. To find out more,
she contacted Pauline Allen from the Sound Learning Centre in Palmers
Green, north London. There are very few practioners in Britain and none in
Scotland.
"Regulating hearing does seem to have an impact on all sorts of areas
including speech," says Allen. "We have had some excellent
results with autism and with learning difficulties and depression. There
are no guarantees, but I have seen amazing progress. One of my greatest
memories is when a four-year-old autistic child who had only ever uttered
isolated words suddenly said "I love you mummy, I love you
daddy".
For Cailan Stillie, who spent ten days in London in October undergoing the
treatment, the results were equally impressive. "Before AIT, he had
quite a lot of words - I would say in the hundreds - but they were all very
much nouns and verbs were just starting to come," says Patricia
Stillie. "What's coming now is adjectives galore. He's putting emotion
into the words as well. He just amazes me, coming out with new words on a
daily basis. Now he's having conversations with his dad and me if we ask
him a question, whereas in the past he may not have answered. We're now
getting more answers to our questions and he's following up with something else.
He's getting a real kick out of it."
AIT was invented in the early Eighties by Guy Bˇrard, a French ear nose and
throat specialist. When he discovered he was going deaf, he developed an
electronic machine - an audiokinetron - to exercise the entire hearing
apparatus including the eardrum and small bones.
His machine filters and amplifies music at specially selected frequencies
which the patient listens to via ear phones. The volume is set as loud as
possible without discomfort. Bˇrard believes that it can alleviate acoustic
sensitivity which is often associated with autism. However he stresses:
"AIT cannot be called a cure for autism but many benefit greatly from
the treatment."
The merits of AIT are now hotly debated. There are many cases of satisfied
parents, and the treatment has influential supporters, such as Dr Bernard
Rimland of The Autism Research Institute in California. There is one case
on record of Georgiana Stehli, in which the treatment appears to have cured
autism. Georgiana was diagnosed as autistic as a child, and suffered from
hearing so acute that normal sounds became terrifying - to her, rain
sounded like machine-gun fire. Now she's 35, and lives a normal life. She
graduated from college, is married, has a job and speaks several languages.
Georgiana credits her miraculous breakthrough to AIT, but there have been
no large-scale scientific studies to back up cases such as hers, and, so
far, her apparent recovery from autism appears to be unique. Certainly
Cailan has not made a complete recovery but his mother is extremely pleased
with the progress he has made and has no hesitation in recommending AIT to
the parents of other autistic children. "With Cailan, improvement
hasn't been dramatic, it's all been little steps," she says. "But
to get to where we are just now, where he's concentrating and he's calmer,
these are big, big things for him. It's going to make our life so much
easier."
Some UK academics are highly dubious of AIT, as under test conditions it
has had mixed results. Professor Oliver Mudford, of Keele University,
conducted one of the most recent studies and says: "We found that 56
per cent of parents could not guess when their children had been given AIT.
Furthermore, no individual child benefited from AIT."
The National Autistic Society neither endorses AIT, nor warns against it.
Rather, it provides parents with information and encourages them to make up
their own minds. "We're concerned that parents are quite desperate, so
they will try anything, but it costs a lot of money," says a
spokesperson. "We suggest they speak to our helpline."
l The National Autistic Society produces a fact sheet on AIT available from
http://www.nas.org.uk/
or call its helpline on 0870 600 8585
l AIT costs £250 for a full assessment, then £800 for 20 sessions. Clients
attend for two 30-minute sessions a day for ten days. For further
information and details of how to get treatment on the NHS or Bupa, contact
The Sound Learning Centre on 0208 882 1060
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