Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): The Committee for Students with Disabilities, Bhopal School of Social Science (BSSS) organised a session on ‘Understanding Mental Disabilities with specific reference to Autism’ in the city on Wednesday.
The session focused on providing an overview on Autism in the larger context of mental disabilities and sensitising students about people suffering from mental disabilities in public life.
Director at the Aadhar Centre, Bhopal, Jagmeet Kaur Chawl was an keynote speaker. She started her session with a briefing on the meaning of child development. She explained to the audience the difference between growth and development.
“All children are different from one another. They have different personalities, potential, temperamental dispositions, reactions, and rates of development. Children generally follow the same sequence of development,” she said.
She focused her presentation on an important concept of Developmental Delay. Delay is said to exist when a child does not reach developmental milestones at the expected age, developmental delay occurs when the child has delayed achievement of one or more of his milestones. This may affect the child's speech and language, his fine and gross motor skills, and/or his personal and social skills.
She stressed on the types of special children and elaborated that those who have shortcomings and therefore difficulties in learning owing to various reasons are also called as children with special needs or special children.
She apprised the audience about the causes as well as the medical reasons for the same. She illustrated through pictures the Autism Destructive Disorder and said that it is a Neuro -developmental Disorder. It affects brain function, occurs early in life (pre or postnatal), children have developmental consequences, symptoms manifest in core areas, affects social Communication and children show Restrictive and Repetitive Behaviours.
At the end, she tried to give solutions so that everyone can come forward to help these special children. She believes that the entire society needs to join hands to support these children. She said, “Disabled people are not stupid and specifically mentioned about the scientist and role model, Stephen Hawking.”
She concluded her session with an interesting video prepared by one of her students on the efforts being done at Aadhar Centre for such special children.
The session was appreciated by Prof. Vinay Mishra, Head of the Psychology Department, BSSS. A total of 97 students and Faculty across the disciplines and departments attended this session. Siji K Sunny proposed vote of thanks.
