Frozen in Time, a Focused Review of Autism Prevalence in Canadian Indigenous Communities.

The unprecedented global continuous rise in autism prevalence is often referred to as a Pandemic while its parallel cost increase to society portrays a Tsunami . Autism data originates mostly from industrialized High-Income geopolitical regions in Europe, North America, and Asian regions. Although efforts to determine autism data from regions in Low and Mid- economies are ongoing, prevalence information from geographically remote and economically vulnerable communities within the privileged regions is largely undetermined, as is the case of the Canadian Indigenous communities, the First Nations, Inuit , and Métis highlighted in this focused review. The underlying theoretical approach adopted here is Transcultural Psychiatry with its emphasis on Context including sociopolitical circumstances, considered the gateway to understanding health, illness, and recovery in groups and individuals. Accordingly, the review includes a concise relevant government system description and history of the relations with Indigenous peoples to provide context to present indigenous relations to Canadian government agencies. Scores in these communities face a myriad of survival challenges encompassing meagre health resources and services. Establishing autism prevalence data in these communities are exceedingly difficult due to multiple factors. While prominent among them are their strong ties to traditional approaches to health, illness, and autism conceptualization, the crucial obstacle is Crown and Provincial government authorities' and agencies' historically rooted colonial response to the needs of families with autistic members. It embodies a posture of infantilization , an attitude that is "frozen in time" in the approach, practice, accommodations, and services for these families. The review provides the preferred autism terminology, information sources, article flow, and Future Directions, all found in the Introduction's first paragraphs.
Competing Interests: Dr. Yvette Hus, PhD is a practicing speech language pathology clinician, and a volunteer deputy chair of the Autism committee of the International Association of Communication Sciences and Disorders. The author reports no other conflicts of interest in this work, and neither financial nor nonfinancial interests to declare.
(© 2023 Hus.)