Dr. Volkmar introduces himself and explains autism.
Dr. Volkmar:
I am Fred Volkmar, MD. I am the director of the Child Studies here at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and I have been at Yale since 1980, having previously then worked as a medical student in an adult training and psychiatry at Stanford and an undergraduate at the University of Illinois.
Autism is the disorder characterized by severe problems in social interaction, communication, and a group of somewhat unusual behavior is that usually get lumped in with the term “insistence on sameness” or “resistance to change.” These are troubles the child has dealing with the world and with the changes but also includes some of the odd behaviors we think of in autism: body rocking, hand and finger flipping.
About Dr. Volkmar, M.D.:
Fred Volkmar, M.D. is the director of the Yale University Child Study Center and Irving B. Harris Professor of Child Psychiatry, Pediatrics and Psychology at Yale University, where he heads the university's autism research and autism clinic. He is also Chief of Child Psychiatry at Yale-New Haven Hospital. His research focuses on understanding the fundamental nature of autism and developing better guidelines to diagnose autism and related conditions.
Visit Dr. Volkmar at Yale University School of Medicine