Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: Everyday Medicine with Dr Luke
Episode: Special Episode 13. Autism with Associate Professor Soumya Basu
Description: The concept of autism continues to evolve with our current approach to diagnosis and management differing significantly from 1908 when the word first appeared to describe a subset of patients with schizophrenia who were withdrawn and self-absorbed. Child psychiatrist Leo Kanner was credited with the first correct description in 1943, reporting eleven highly intelligent children who displayed “a powerful desire for aloneness” and “an obsessive insistence on persistent sameness”. He named this “early infantile autism”.
A year later in 1944, Hans Asperger described a “milder” form of autism now known as Asperger’s Syndrome where the boys he described were highly intelligent...