Publisher's Synopsis
Travis provides a simple guidebook for parents of newly diagnosed children that will help them tell the differences and similarities between autism and mental illness. Many doctors and therapists are unsure of the differences and think they are both the same sometimes which can create a scary situation in which doctors over medicate your child with autism. Learn this and much more in this book. Travis talks about the importance of getting your child social skills coaching/ He says mental illness is not caused by autism and is not even a part of autism. The mental illness can onset due to situations that present themselves in a person with autism's life like social isolation and loneliness. It is important that your child's doctor and therapy team are advocating for social skills coaching for your child. Doctors and therapist also need to understand that you cannot begin to treat the mental illness until you begin to treat what is causing the mental illness. You do not need to treat the autism. There is no way to medically treat the autism but we need to treat the symptoms that the autism causes. If someone struggles with social skills because they have autism then we treat them for social skills and not autism. You have to treat the situations that present themselves in your child's life more than you have to treat the autism. You can do special diets and watch what you eat but you still aren't curing or treating the autism. You are treating the problems that you have because you have autism. To many doctors think they can treat a child with autism by medicating them and all that does is make things worse. As Travis explains in this book you will learn how to advocate with your doctor and therapy team to ensure your child is getting social skills treatment that will help them with their mental illness as opposed to trying to treat the mental illness without treating what is causing the mental illness which would be the social isolation and poor social skills. This is a great book describing the difference between autism and mental illness as well as informing parents about how doctors get confused about the two.
