That same year, California recorded acute-care hospital stays of at least a month for 60 patients with an autism diagnosis. His mother, who felt it wasn’t safe to take him home, worried that staff “were all afraid of him . Adolescents and young adults with severe autism may still have the mental age of a child, and short-term care to stabilize those in crisis who are nonverbal or combative is practically nonexistent. It must be highly specialized, usually involving intensive behavioral therapy; someone with severe autism gets little benefit from traditional psychiatric services. Tyler Stolz, a 26-year-old woman with autism and a seizure disorder, was stabilized after a few weeks in a Sacramento hospital.

Source: Washington Post September 24, 2017 00:33 UTC