Autism

"No it's just the opposite - everything gets through. He has trouble with feelings, and emotions, so he gets very frightened and confused."

- Autism nurse , Concordia General Hospital, Chicago. June 6, 1998.

Autism is disorder of impaired human neural development, characterized by greatly impaired social interaction, communication, and restrictive/repetative behavior, as opposed to mental retardation, which is more characterized with an unfortunate lack of intelligence, while autistics generally don't suffer from this. They more suffer from a lack of ability to express themselves. It is typically diagnosed in individuals three years old or less, and Simon Lynch is an example of an autistic person who was diagnosed at an early age. Lynch has also been described as a person who "has trouble with feelings and emotions." Before June 1998, Art Jeffries had never even known what 'autistic' meant, or even that the disorder existed.