Autism in Texas

• There are more than17,000 children in public schools in Texas who have been identified as autistic.
• Autism affects 1 in every 166 children, and it affects four times as many boys as girls. (Center for Disease Control)
• Autism has a 20% growth per year -- that equates to 8 new children acquiring autism every day or one child every 3 hours. (Ray Palmer Ph.d. University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio, Texas)
• Autism is more common than Down’s syndrome, childhood cancer, cerebral palsy, and multiple sclerosis.
• Autism is a disorder that impairs a child’s ability to communicate, socialize, play, and think.
• Autism affects all socioeconomic backgrounds, regardless of race or ethnicity.
• Autism has grown 1,354%from the 1991-92 school year to the 2001-2002 school year.
• 80% of parents with autistic children reported stress above the 85 th percentile compared to the parents in the general population. (Parent Stress Study Result by Harold Longenecker, Ph.d.)
• It costs about $ 3.2 million to care for an autistic person over the course of his or her lifetime. (Understanding Autism: From Basic Neuroscience to Treatment by Michael Ganz, Assistant Professor of Society, Human Development and Health at Harvard School of Public Health (CRC Press, 2006)
• Autism is a “spectrum” disorder so that children with autism have a wide range of specific symptoms, and each one will respond differently to therapy. As a result, each child needs an individualized program to progress.
• With appropriate treatment, almost 50% of people with autism will become indistinguishable from the mainstream population.