Friday, May 13, 2011
Elizabeth Ballroom E-F and Lirenta Foyer Level 2 (Manchester Grand Hyatt)
9:00 AM
N. Mochizuki1, S. Nakajima2, I. Tani3, F. Someki3 and M. Tsujii4, (1)Research Center for Child Mental Development , Hamamatsu University School of Medicine , Hamamatsu, Japan, (2)Osaka-Hamamatsu Joint center for Child Mental Development, Hamamatsu University School of Medicine, Hamamatsu, Japan, (3)Research Center for Child Mental Development, Hamamatsu University School of Medicine, Hamamatsu, Japan, (4)Department of Contemporary Sociology, Chukyo University, Nagoya, Japan
Background: It is expected that Autism Spectrum Disorders(ASD) children have a lot of difficulties on their life. Therefore we need to detect autism-specific and lead them to support systems as early as possible(Robins & Dumont,2006). Because diagnostic criteria of ASD are based on clinical observations of children whom aged 3 to 4 years and older, it is not able to be applied to children who are under 3 years of age as in the Kamio’s(2009) study. The delay of diagnosis of ASD will lead the delay of supports needed. Accordingly, it is essential to detect ASD at 18-24months of age. Recently, a growing body of literature indicates that children with ASD can be reliably diagnosed as young as age 2 on the basis of various social abnormalities (Kamio,2009). Although it is showed that the M-CHAT has been effective in early detection as a screening instrument(Inada & Kamio, 2010; Koyama, 2007), few studies targeted on the community in Japan.Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine the usefulness of M-CHAT as a screening instrument for early detection of ASD comparing to previous studies, and to clarify the needs of screened children in Japan.
Objectives: The present study aimed to examine the usefulness of M-CHAT as a screen instrument for ASD and to investigate the proportion of parents who have support needs in Japan.
Methods: Participants consisted of 421 parents and their children who take the 18months checkup by public health service in a city X, Aichi Prefecture, located in central Japan. Japanese version of M-CHAT (Inada & Kamio, 2006; Inada et al., 2010) was used. Parents of children completed M-CHAT at their home and brought to the checkup, then health nurses and clinical psychologists confirmed it.
Results: In this study, of the 421 caces,96 cases (22.8%) screened positive on the M-CHAT. In Kamio & Inada(2006), of the 1749 casec of 364 cases(20.8%) screened positive. The percentage of screened positive cases of this study was slightly higher than that of the other Japanese sample (Kamio & Inad ,2006). The reason was following. In this study, M-CHAT was confirmed not only by the public health nurses but also by the clinical psychologists. Namely, the clinical psychologists had more specialized knowledge of ASD than the public health nurses did, and the check of the M-CHAT was more strictly. Both Japanese studies showed that 18 months-old-children with support needs for ASD were about 20% .
Conclusions: In this study, of the 421 caces,96 cases (22.8%) screened positive on the M-CHAT, and it suggested that the M-CHAT could be useful instrument for detection of ASD children in the community.
