Lake Geneva with its famous fountain (Jet d'eau)
As some regular readers are well aware, people with autism are often prescribed psychotropic/psychiatric drugs to make them more manageable; this is particularly true of those who live in residential care homes and for those living in America. When it comes to adults, as Tyler just pointed out in a comment, 1 in 6 adult American takes one or more psychotropic/psychiatric drugs.
These drugs do not treat the underlying dysfunctions in most autism, but do produce a more compliant/sedated individual. They often lead to weight gain and its associated medical problems; some of these drugs are addictive, some can cause irreversible side effects (e.g. tardive dyskinesia).
In England there is a campaign called STOMP to stop this overuse of these psychiatric drugs in people with autism, which can only be a good thing.
STEP
Hopefully one day there will be a campaign to treat the underlying biological dysfunctions within autism, which could be called STEP (Start Effective Personalized treatment); not all treatments need to be drugs.
STALICLA
One reader of this blog has recently established her own start-up company, Stalicla, in Switzerland with the aim of treating individual sub-types of autism. I assume that her STP1, comprising two repurposed drugs, targeting her Phenotype1 subgroup, said to represent 15% of the total idiopathic ASD patient population, is the one she gives her son.
Good luck Lynn - you are going to need it.
STOMP
Stopping over medication of people with a learning disability, autism or both (STOMP) is the campaign in England.
“Public Health England says that every day about 30,000 to 35,000 adults with a learning disability are taking psychotropic medicines, when they do not have the health conditions the medicines are for. Children and young people are also prescribed them.”
Here is a case study example of an over-medicated young man with autism.
While I fully support the STOMP campaign, I guess many STOMP supporters would think my PolyPill and Lyne’s STP1 are complete folly. Hopefully Lynn’s clinical trials will be successful, not to forget many people hope Dr Ben-Ari’s phase 3 bumetanide trial will be successful. Kritika and many others are waiting for results on CM-AT.
So it looks too early to launch my STEP campaign (Start Effective Personalized treatment for people with autism and/or ID and/or epilepsy, not forgetting Down syndrome, Pitt Hopkins, SATB2, Sotos, Turner, Fragile X and all the others).
Conclusion
This blog is all about using drugs more intelligently, not to sedate people with autism but rather to do the opposite, to improve their cognitive function so that they are more able to be self-supporting.
The inappropriate use of potent psychotropic/psychiatric drugs helps to give all drugs a bad name.
Fortunately Lynn chose her company name beginning with ST, which fits nicely with stepping and stomping; I get to squeeze two posts into one and use a nice photo of Lake Geneva and not a photo of someone’s foot.