Heye Sophia's List: Counter Argument

• It can cost about $3.2 million to take care of an autistic person over his or her lifetime.
• “The Costs of Autism,” in the newly published book, Understanding Autism: From Basic Neuroscience to Treatment (CRC Press, 2006).
• I hope that my research can help focus more attention on directing more resources toward finding prevention and treatment options for autism
• It also captures the value of lost productivity for an autistic person’s parents. Examples include loss of income due to reduced work hours or not working altogether. Ganz estimates that annual indirect costs for autistic individuals and their parents range from more than $39,000 to nearly $130,000.

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• What is more, we seem to have a basic drive for it. Psychologists find that human beings have fundamental need for inclusion in group life and for close relationships. We are truly social animals.
• we function best when this social need is met.
• Yet the effects are distinct enough to be measured over time, so that unmet social needs take a serious toll on health, eroding our arteries, creating high blood pressure, and even undermining learning and memory.
• Chronic loneliness is something else entirely. It is one of the surest markers in existence for maladjustment.
• children, it leads to all kinds of problems. Failure to be socially connected to peers is the real reason behind most school dropouts. It sets in motion a course on which children spin their way to outcast status and develop delinquency and other forms of antisocial behavior.
• adults, loneliness is a major precipitant of depression and alcoholism. And it increasingly appears to be the cause of a range of medical problems
• Psychologist John Cacioppo of the University of Chicago has been tracking the effects of loneliness.
• Loneliness, Cacioppo concludes, sets in motion a variety of "slowly unfolding pathophysiological processes." The net result is that the lonely experience higher levels of cumulative wear and tear.
• Social skills are crucial for your health.

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• All people seem to depend on varying amounts and intensities of social interaction to keep them happy, stable, and sane. This is not surprising given that human beings are social animals by nature.
• Human beings are also naturally curious.
• ask questions
• seek reasons and information to form explanations that allow us to understand ourselves as well as our world and our place and purpose in the world.
• Prisoners who are isolated for prolonged periods of time have been known to experience "depression, despair, anxiety, rage, claustrophobia, hallucinations, problems with impulse control, and/or an impaired ability to think, concentrate, or remember." (2) Studies have also shown that isolation can cause "impaired vision and hearing... tinnitus [(ringing in the ears)], weakening of the immune system, amenorrhea [(absence of menstrual periods in women)], premature menopause... and aggressive behavior in prisoners, volunteers and animals." (1)

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