During a meeting held on 26 April at the Senate of the Republic in Rome on the topic of Autism, a Representative of the Provincial Health Authority of Catanzaro – District of Lamezia Terme – declared “Ethics calls for respect and behaviour, translated into ‘professional action such as law, deontology, ethics and morality, respecting the individual capable of self-determination, directing one’s action in line with one’s predispositions, interests and values. The person cannot be the object of training and conditioning distorted in his own being”.
We would like to make some important considerations on what has been declared.
Over the years we have received continuous reports on the disservices of the Child Neuropsychiatry Department of the Lamezia Terme District: the long waits to have a visit and their cancellation due to lack of staff, the failure to administer diagnostic tests and the consequent obligation to travel outside the region to receive a complete diagnosis, but, in particular, what struck the families was the attitude maintained by the team regarding cognitive behavioral therapies.
Cognitive behavioral therapies have been included by the Higher Institute of Health since 2011in the “Guidelines 21 for the treatment of autism spectrum disorder in children and adolescents” and to date, the unique scientifically validated therapies, as also stated by the World Health Organization (WHO) and by leading Autism experts at national and international level.
The families, who turned to local services, told us that they had been told by these professionals to train their children like soldiers or, even worse, like dogs, yet in recent years the Istituto Superiore di Sanità has made training mandatory on cognitive behavioral therapies at a national level. As an Association, we have always been available for discussion and collaboration, also organizing professional refresher meetings dedicated to healthcare workers, completely at our own expense, and we have tried in vain to demonstrate that the interventions implemented with our children evaluate the their condition and that the planning of their therapeutic activities always starts from their predispositions and interests; but, considering that one of the fundamental cornerstones of the diagnosis of Autism is the presence of restricted interests, supporting and supporting autistic people in the emergence of these predispositions and interests is certainly neither distortion nor conditioning, as stated.
Considering that the Child Neuropsychiatry of the District of Catanzaro, part of the same ASP, has a totally opposite approach, that is, it promotes and advises families in the Catanzaro area on early and intensive cognitive behavioral intervention, through this note we ask the Health Directorate what the actual position of the same regarding this topic, and what, if any, is the recognized and scientifically approved therapeutic proposal that the Lamezia Terme team considers superior to those already mentioned and universally recognized.
Finally, we ask ourselves how the aforementioned team can evaluate our children according to the bio-psycho-social model without leaving the department to observe them in real life environments, such as school (where they do not carry out in-person daq services before the Covid-19 pandemic). , without creating bridges with those who take care of them on a daily basis, without supporting families in preparing the social context for integration and their true inclusion.
Annamaria Lucchino
on its own behalf and on behalf of
families of the Association Oltre l’Autismo Catanzaro Odv
