Historical Background
The history of autism in China is a brief one, as it was not diagnosed there until 1982 (Tao 1987). Since that point, the landscape of research and scholarly work pertaining to the epidemiology and clinical care of autism and related disorders has been relatively bare. Some of this can be attributed to the fact that dozens of dialects are spoken throughout the mainland, leading to a relative lack of appropriately translated materials relating to the diagnostic and treatment practices of autism (Ming 2013). This has left many doctors, teachers, and a majority of the general public with a lack of awareness and understanding of the disorder.
China has a long history of special education schools, dating back to the early twentieth century and through the times of Mao Zedong (Deng et al. 2001). These institutions have been mostly geared toward those suffering from blindness and deafness, rather than those with intellectual disabilities, however (Yang and Wang 1994)....
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Cohen, J. (2015). China and Autism. In: Volkmar, F. (eds) Encyclopedia of Autism Spectrum Disorders. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6435-8_102107-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6435-8_102107-1
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