The Health Ministry’s mental health division director Diah
Setia Utami said that around 30 percent of autistic children in
Indonesia were likely to suffer from psychosis, due to a lack of
understanding.
“Autism is not a physical illness and cannot be
cured by medicine. Children with autism need frequent therapy as well as
moral support from family and the society,” Diah told The Jakarta Post
recently. “Unfortunately, most autistic children in the country do not
receive proper treatment, because many parents feel ashamed if their
children are diagnosed with autism, and society is still discriminatory
toward them, which results in many becoming
depressed.”
According to Diah, the lack of knowledge of the symptoms of autism leads to improper and delayed treatment.
“Sometimes,
children begin their therapy sessions too late, because a lot of
parents think that it’s a good sign that their children stay calm all
the time [even though they are actually showing signs of autism],” she
added.
Diah suggested that parents of autistic children pay
closer attention to their behavior and emotions, as well as helping them
to develop communication and social skills at an early stage.
Separately, Health Minister Nafsiah Mboi said that the country saw an increasing number of autistic children every year.
“It
is good sign if the number is increasing, because that means more
autistic children are being diagnosed,” she said. “We have to embrace
these children because they were still often seen as bullying targets,
which could harm their psychological condition,” she added.
April
is autism awareness month but despite the increasing number of autistic
children in the country the Health Ministry still had no reliable data
on the actual number of children with autism.
The Health
Ministry’s head of intelligence center Eka Viora said the country has
not yet conducted a comprehensive survey to find out the actual number
of autistic children.
“We are having problems in calculating the
number of children diagnosed with autism because the service for them
is spread between health facilities and education institutions, which
could result in overlapping of data,” Eka said. “Moreover, not all of
them receive medication or therapy.”
“We estimated that there are
currently around 112,000 children under 19 years old diagnosed with
autism in the country,” she added.
Eka said that treatment for
children diagnosed with autism could be found at every public hospital
and treatment was covered by the government-run community healthcare
plan (Jamkesmas).
However, she admitted that areas outside Java lag behind in health and education facilities for children with autism.
“The
ministry aims to increase the number of health facilities and to
distribute more health workers to reach all of the country’s autistic
children. We have come to realize that we need to pay more attention to
autistic children,” she said. (
Nadya Natahadibrata, The Jakarta Post, Surabaya | National | Mon, April 08 2013, 10:17 AM
)
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