Finding a Clinician for Autism: Advice from ARI
Parents of children with autism often face the challenge of finding a suitable practitioner. At one point the Autism Research Institute (ARI) did their best to maintain a list of practitioners who offered a biomedical approach to autism. Such a list is difficult to oversee, however. Eventually, the effort was replaced with guidance, such as this below, to help families navigate their search efforts.
This article is featured on their website autism.org. An introduction to the advice is given below, and we encourage you to access the entire article, see link provided.
Advice to parents from the Autism Research Institute
The first step is to contact a local support group and ask for referrals. If there are none in your area, investigate ARI’s listservs. If you and your loved one with ASD are able to travel, you might not need to limit yourself to local clinicians—many will work with you primarily over the phone, though each State Medical Board has its own office-visit requirements.
Nutrition and supplementation are a very big part of addressing the needs of those on the spectrum. Dietary adjustment is one of the most effective treatments, though it’s often not as simple as gluten-free, casein-free, and soy-free. Some diets, such as the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, can provide impressive results when implemented correctly, but can actually be harmful when done wrong (kidney damage, ketosis).
