Treatment
There is no permanent cure for CDD - loss of language and skills related to social interaction and self-care are serious. The affected children face permanent disabilities in certain areas and require long term care. Treatment of CDD involves both behavior therapy and medications.
- Behavior therapy - Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA): Its aim is to systematically teach the child to relearn language, self-care and social skills. The treatment programs designed in this respect "use a system of rewards to reinforce desirable behaviors and discourage problem behavior." ABA programs may be designed by a board-certified specialist in behavior analysis called a "BCBA" (Board Certified Behavior Analyst), but ABA is also widely used by a number of other health care personnel from different fields like psychologists, speech therapists, physical therapists and occupational therapists with differing levels of expertise. It is important that at the same time, parents, teachers and caregivers also use the behavior therapy treatments because the research is crystal clear that a consistent approach by all concerned results in greater treatment gains by the child.
- Medications: There are no medications available to directly treat CDD. Antipsychotic medications are used to treat severe behavior problems like aggressive stance and repetitive behavior patterns. Anticonvulsant medications are used to control seizures.
Read more about this topic: Childhood Disintegrative Disorder
Famous quotes containing the word treatment:
“The treatment of African and African American culture in our education was no different from their treatment in Tarzan movies.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“A regular council was held with the Indians, who had come in on their ponies, and speeches were made on both sides through an interpreter, quite in the described mode,—the Indians, as usual, having the advantage in point of truth and earnestness, and therefore of eloquence. The most prominent chief was named Little Crow. They were quite dissatisfied with the white man’s treatment of them, and probably have reason to be so.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)