Comorbidity and Autism

I found the video on comorbidity extremely interesting, especially in relation to writing an FBA. I had a student last year who had verbal outburst and aggression. Although I believed it was behavioral, the idea of it being seizure related was thrown around. Watching this video now makes me take a second look at all my students and their FBAs. I am currently writing an FBA for one of my students who has been diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder and OCD. His rigidity and stereotypical behaviors impair him to such an extent that he has these dual diagnoses.

Although it would be very difficult for myself, as a teacher, to truly discriminate between ASD and a possible co-morbid disorder, I think when writing an FBA it is important to look back at the students file. Are these behaviors that have been exhibited before or are they new? What age did the student first exhibit these behaviors? Does the student have a family history of another mental disorder? Also, when writing the FBA, if the student is diagnosed with a co-morbid disorder, a professional can look up treatments for the co-morbid disorder and see if there is a way to adapt these in order to suit the student with ASD.

I know that several others have suggested this already, but I do think that baseline data is so critical to a true FBA. By keeping daily behavior logs, you can get a better sense of the student over time. As previously mentioned in class, our perception of a behavior could be vastly different from the actuality of it. For instance, if you have a student who very rarely exhibits aggressive behaviors, you might rate a single instance of aggression as much higher of a degree of behavioral outburst than someone else. However, if you were to look back at the student's file, you might see that the spring time is always difficult for them and this is a recurring trend in their educational carreer.