Wendy Ross, M.D., the director of the new Center for Autism and Neurodiversity at Jefferson Health and Thomas Jefferson University, recently had a letter to the editor published in the New York Times’ Book Review. Dr. Ross’s letter responded to an essay by Columbia University professor Marie Myung-Ok Lee titled “The Trouble With Autism in Novels” about how novels depict characters with autism.
Dr. Ross, who is a developmental and behavioral pediatrician, applauded Lee’s statement that autism is more than a literary device and those with the developmental disorder deserve a deeper look and more profound understanding.
“I hope to unite their therapeutic, educational and medical plans into one story, so they are no longer ordering from an often disjointed à-la-carte menu of interventions not tailored to them as individuals,” Dr. Ross wrote of her patients. “The best support, however, comes to these children from people taking a moment to see them for who they are, beyond the diagnosis and the metaphor.”
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