'France is 50 years behind': the 'state scandal' of French autism treatment

A reliance on psychoanalysis sees autistic children going undiagnosed, being placed in psychiatric units and even being removed from their parents

Like thousands of French children whose parents believe they have autism, Rachel’s six-year-old son had been placed by the state in a psychiatric hospital day unit. The team there, of the school of post-Freudian psychoanalysis, did not give a clear-cut diagnosis.

Rachel, who lived in a small village outside the alpine city of Grenoble, said she would go elsewhere to assess all three of her children. But the hospital called social services, who threatened to take the children away from her.

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from The Guardian http://ift.tt/2nK6Qwm