Early diagnosis and treatment of autism is very important!

"Autism Awareness Training Program" was organized in cooperation with Üsküdar University Vocational School of Health Services (VSHS) Occupational Health and Safety Program and Young Red Crescent Club. In the event, which aims to raise awareness about Autism Spectrum Disorder, it was pointed out that early diagnosis and intervention are very important.

The opening speeches of the program were made by Üsküdar University Young Red Crescent Club President Kübranur Baştekin and Occupational Health and Safety Program Head Asst. Gamze Kağan.

Psychological Counselor Specialist Psychologist Can Kamsız, Clinical Psychologist Meryem İntaş and Clinical Psychologist Murat Çelik participated in the event held in the Beylerbeyi conference hall as guests. The event was attended by Üsküdar University Faculty of Health Sciences Head of Occupational Health and Safety Department Asst. Prof. Rüştü Uçan also attended.

Young Red Crescent Club President Kübranur Baştekin: "We are trying to meet everything expected from a club"

Üsküdar University Young Red Crescent Club President Nurse Kübranur Baştekin talked about their work. Baştekin stated that "As the President of the Red Crescent Club, I would like to tell you about the activities we do because when the Red Crescent Club is mentioned, everyone thinks of blood collection activities. We also do them; however, in addition to these activities, we go to children's love homes, and we go to nursing homes. We spent a lot of time in the earthquake zone, and we provided a lot of aid. Apart from that, we organize workshops, trainings, seminars, and workshops. We try to meet everything expected of a club. If we are lucky, we will have a Syrian project at the end of the year. In addition to the Syrian project, we also want to organize an event in Hatay. We want to go to the earthquake-affected regions in Hatay in advance and distribute both a festival and an aid distribution."

Specialist Psychologist Can Kamsız: "Our aim is to raise awareness"

Psychological Counselor Specialist Psychologist Can Kamsız informed the participants about the Psychological Counseling Unit and stated that "I would like to tell you a little bit about the Psychological Counseling Unit. In the Psychological Counseling Unit, we are trying to serve you, our students, together with our esteemed Clinical Psychologist Görkem Altıntaş Atasoy and Clinical Psychologist Hazal Erkan Arıman. Among these services, when there are one-on-one counseling sessions, solution-oriented interviews, crisis intervention interviews, and processes that cannot be passed or continued in psychotherapy or solution-oriented sessions, when necessary, we cooperate in the field of psychiatry at Üsküdar University NPİSTANBUL Hospital and carry out consultations. Our aim today is to raise awareness about autism spectrum disorder, which is actually very important to us. The reason why we call autism a neurodevelopmental disorder and spectrum is that each individual with autism is unique from each other, and their needs are different from each other."

Asst. Prof. Gamze Kağan: "When we shout at a deaf person, we act as if we will hear"

Head of Occupational Health and Safety Program Asst. Prof. Gamze Kağan stated that "Today we organized an event based on the topic of Autism education awareness. We felt the need to do this program with our professor Can Kamsız. I realized that I did not know much about these issues and if I did, we could be more conscious and lead to good things. As Mr. Kamsız said, it is a 'new language of communication'. When it comes to autism, it is a bit of our ignorance. We put them in the status of disabled so that the disabled citizen is treated. In fact, we also treat people with disabilities in the wrong way. When we shout at a deaf person, we act as if they are going to hear. We thought about what we can do to not do these things, to act more consciously, more beneficial to our environment, without harming it. We realized that we needed it in this regard and organized this event."

Clinical Psychologist Meryem İntaş: "It seems that one out of 36 children is diagnosed with autism"

Pointing out that early diagnosis and intervention are very important in autism, Clinical Psychologist Meryem İntaş stated that “I graduated from Istanbul University in 2000. I have been working in this field for 24 years and fifty percent of my time is spent with children with the Autism Spectrum. When we ask mothers; They say, 'I felt it was different when I was breastfeeding.' You can notice this by the way the child makes direct eye contact and their bodily relationship with you. The diagnosis is usually not made before the age of 3. This diagnosis is made by child psychiatrists and neurologists. It is usually not diagnosed until the age of 3. In general, it can disappear with education, perhaps without being diagnosed. Recently, Autism Spectrum Disorder has been confused with Reactive Attachment Disorder and screen exposure. In fact, its number seems to have increased. Looking at the literature, it seems that one in 36 children is diagnosed with autism. I think this is not about the increase in the number of children, but rather about the access of such children to the clinics and the increase in the awareness of the society in this sense. Perceiving the characteristics of the children, grandmothers and grandmothers used to say, 'No, do not try to stick something to the child.' What were the mothers doing about it? Their father also spoke late, and their mother was delayed, as did their late speech. Now that this awareness has been created, they can reach clinics more quickly. In fact, I think in this sense, it is not as if the number of autisms has increased, but the rate of coming to clinics has increased. With early intervention and early diagnosis, it can be ensured that such children can get rid of this diagnosis in the early period, perhaps without ever entering that diagnosis group."

Psychologist Murat Çelik: "As human beings, we are born equal but different from each other"

Clinical Psychologist Murat Çelik expressed that a person should treat a different individual with their own language of expression and stated that "We are all human and we are different from each other. As human beings, we are born equal but different from each other. This difference is our psychological and physiological characteristics. We are born with these physiological traits; do we need a label? In fact, of course, the way one treats an individual with autism should be the same as the way one treats a normal individual. I say normal because, unfortunately, the society we live in brings these concepts, so we use these concepts. When your perspective changes, you can clearly understand the other person and communicate with them. If we treat an individual with autism as if they were autistic, as you would treat any other human being, then the spectrum between the two people there continues. In other words, we should speak and treat a different individual not with their differences, but with our own expression, open communication, and empathy. Emotion cannot exist in isolation because, neurologically, between the ages of 3 and 6, our brain establishes ten billion neurological connections. No matter how much of these connections we use until the age of 6, the brain mows down and throws away the part we cannot use with scissors. In other words, if you have not learned or heard a foreign language from your family or anywhere between the ages of 3-6, you have difficulty learning it after the age of 6. Does this make us different? Everyone's characteristics have to be different from each other, but if this difference restricts and hinders the social life of the individual, what we need to do here is to understand them, listen to them and communicate with them compassionately."

The program ended after a group photo was taken.

 

Üsküdar News Agecy (ÜNA)