Autistic Self Injury - The Autism Story CNN Does Not Tell You

CNN has offered a number of features on autism over the past few years. For reasons that remain unknown to many parents of autistic children CNN with all its resources and with its ability to speak to the world has chosen to obsess over Amanda Baggs, an allegedly low functioning autistic person, diagnosed with an autism disorder as a young woman, who amongst other abilities and accomplishments, was able to attend a college for gifted young people, ( Simon's Rock College ), make friends, and engage educators and professionals in discussion. Meanwhile CNN ignores the plight of millions of autistic people around the globe, including autistic children who hurt themselves quite severely.



DailyRecord.co.uk is not as squeamish as CNN. In Help My Autistic Daughter Before She Kills Herself , the DR tells the story of Samantha, a seven year old Scottish girl who will sometimes beat her head off any solid object within reach. She has broken her own nose and fractured fingers while hitting her head with her own hands. Doctors think it is Samantha's autism which directly causes the self injurious behavior while Samantha's mother believes it is because she is suffering from an undiagnosed medical ailment, possibly a tumor, and pain which she can not understand or communicate. Regardless of which is the more accurate picture in Samantha's case many severely autistic children, are known to injure themself. My own son has engaged in self injurious behavior although nowhere nearly as seriously as Samantha whose parents are fighting to obtain the specialist services including autism specific education that Samantha needs.



The DailyRecord story includes two pictures of Samantha. One picture shows her without apparent injury and the other shows her extremely bruised face. You are unlikely to see such a hard autism reality on Dr. Sanjay Gupta's CNN autism productions but it is a reality that some parents of autistic children must face, and their children must suffer with, if they do not have access to the services of appropriate autism specialists.