Have you noticed a lot more characters with autism appearing in television programmes lately?
The most recent was on Casualty ( a BBC1 UK drama series running for over 20 years set in the ED of a hospital).
The basis of the plot was that a mother of an autistic son was dosing him with un-prescribed medicines in a bid to help him get better. The medicines were poisioning him and so he ended up being admitted as an emergency patient. The usual scenario occured, written by someone I am sure has not got a child with autism, where the staff condemned the mother, called social services, she had her little speech about why she felt the need to try to cure him, and then it all worked out nice and rosy (oh apart from the fact he was not going to be cured by the medicines she had given him).
In another medical drama series, again long running, but this time set in a doctors surgery, and ironically called 'Doctors', (also on BBC1) a pre-pubescent girl was taken by her mother to seek out surgery to give the girl a hysterectomy so that she would not have to go through the trauma of menstruation and possible unwanted pregnancy from abusive male caregivers.
The doctor she saw was very un-helpful and very matter of fact that the mother had no right to take her daughters reproductive organs away.
The whole episode was written with tangible hatred towards parents of autistic children, with the obvious highlight being towards females with the disability. The dialogue was stunted and stumbled along with almost a scant knowledge of what autism is actually about. The actress playing the part of the doctor played her role with vitriol, a lemon sucking sour mouth, and had no warmth or compassion ( the directors fault).
There were no facts, no information for the viewer unfamiliar with autism and it only sought to dramatise a now popluar disability, but failed to seek out any real humanity behind the story.
The upshot of the mother being turned down, with much patronising, was that she left for America where the operation would be performed at a high monetary cost. I would point out that the topic of birth control injections to halt periods, and drugs to stop puberty were also mooted by the mother and given the same snide reception from the writer.
Another BBC1 drama ( a theme here surely!) called 'Missing' where another non-verbal ( well echolalic) young adult man was found wandering alone. At the time the police officer did'nt know he had autism, but then after he was being interviewed in a room, one of the other police characters recognised the disability from his list of traits. So we saw the drama unfold that it was actually his mother who was missing as he was with her and she had gone. Fast forward through some well meaning but cliched nonsense and on to the mother being found, with paracetamol on a beach, wanting to kill herself as she could'nt cope anymore.
Pretty negative writing going on. Uniformed, cliched, almost contemptuous (towards parents) scripts, and all seemingly because more documentaries are abounding on to our screens and autism is the latest hot topic. Rather a shame that the writers are information poor and so doom laden with hostility.
There have been other portrayals in dramas, but nothing that has really dealt well.
Grange Hill (hey BBC1 again) featured a boy with Aspergers back in the early 90's I remember but it was very basic and not really meant to 'deal' with the issue apart from a few scenes were he would get angry, a staff member would intervene, blame the Aspergers, everyone would go "oh" and then the next teenage drama was being played out.
If any editor out there would like a real insight into living with autism give me a nudge. It is not all anger, angst, and animosity, it is inspirational, eye opening and sometimes very humuorous.
And I say this from being a parent with an autistic child, not someone who has read a small paragraph in the dictionary.
