The Social Determination of Autism in an Ecuadorian Child Population

Abstract

Introduction: The social determination of autism is an analysis from the perspective of the critical epidemiology and the neurodiversity paradigm, which objective is to understand autism holistically, therefore insertion from a personal reality to a group. The purpose of the study was to identify differential conditions and characteristics of families with children diagnosed with autism and families with children not diagnosed with autism and to analyze how these conditions are present with more or less strength in cases or in controls, to get to know the situation of autism disorder diagnosed children in the country. The investigation also evaluated the protective and destructive processes that surround them, with the purpose of raising hypothesis to confront in future studies. Development: The research focused on understanding how these logics are expressed in destructive or protective processes of the society-nature metabolism in their ways of life and analyzing how these intervene in the genotype and phenotype. A cross-sectional study conducted in 2016 in the cities of Quito and Guayaquil, with 69 autism disorder diagnosed children and 91 neurotypical children, aged 2 to 12, revealed that 56.5% of the population with autism appears to be in the middle social and economic class in Quito and the poor social and economic one in Guayaquil. Their social and economic conditions limit the access to early diagnosis: 73.4 % of parents detected the signs of alarm before the children were three years old and took them to be evaluated by the paediatrician, without being able to obtain an accurate diagnosis. The population of a poor social and economic class presented a higher percentage of comorbidities than the one located in the middle class. The required expenditure fluctuated between 100 to 25 thousand dollars, according to the social insertion. Conclusion: These results show a clear differentiation between lifestyles, according to the socio-territorial condition of the sample.