Here’s a good basic reference for you try. It should hopefully clear up some of your confusion about what actually constitutes a delusion or hallucination.

http://books.google.com/books?.....38;f=false

Clearly an autistic child can also experience psychotic symptoms (in the same way that a child with a broken limb can experience such symptoms…)

http://content.karger.com/prod.....=000255958

A systematic review in 2009 (looking at psychiatric co-morbidity with autistic spectrum disorders) found that the strongest association was between ASD and anxiety disorders. Depression also appeared common but the evidence regarding psychotic co-morbidity was contradictory.

and there are those like me who thinks ABA has some merit but needs to be remastered to suit the needs of the autist than the parent.

How can you tell? Well, there are many people in the ND movement who have researched, delivered, advocated for or otherwise help support autism therapies. Many got into ND through their work in autism services.

Strange how these people never get a mention from anti-ND bloggers. Strange how pro-ND professionals never get a mention. Strange how anti-ND people stick almost exclusively to what is on the bloggosphere.

It’s almost as if they don’t actually know about the offline ND world at all.

Including you it seem. You did not provide sufficient context for your original scenerio – i.e. that the belief was irrational, non-cultural and absolute – that is, the belief does not go away with rational explanation from a trusted authourity. Mistaken beliefs are not delusions.

Try reading what is actually written. It’s the polite thing to do.

“Many do not accept that autism can be associated with psychotic symptoms e.g. delusions and hallucinations”

Indeed not, for this wasn’t the actual arguement – nor has anyone actually made it – that psychosis is not an essential criteria for autism.

It is not, as per the DSM and ICD.

Case closed, move along now.

Dismissing Kristina Chew as ‘anti-treatment’ because of her criticism of ABA, despite the fact that she has discussed several treatments on her website.

The “anti-treatment” argument is a major straw man in online discussions. A common example—if you side with actual toxicologists and say “I think chelation challenge testing and chelation as a treatment for autism is unwarranted given the science” you can expect a response of “you are anti treatment”.

Pervasive developmental disorders (PDDs) and infantile schizophrenia were initially thought to be the same condition, but distinct differences were described in later research. However, attempts to identify psychosis in individuals with PDDs continue to be challenging and controversial. The two disorders share many similar features, including perceptual abnormalities, thought disorder, catatonia, and deficiencies in reality testing…

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu.....t=Abstract

I remain firmly convinced that Harold totally believes in his interpretations (even after repeated corrections) and is motivated to respond due to his self-image as a serious advocate.

Typical troll behaviour is to respond to rebuttals with further troll like behaviour. Harolds typical response to rebuttals is to demean his opponents (always by comparing them disfavourably to his apparently unvalidated self-image), provide a quote that doesn;t say what he thinks it does, and then co-incidentally disappear when his rebuttals are shown to be ill-informed or easily refuted (as they were with his dismissal of Larry Arnold).

Harolds intent is not to disrupt or ‘troll’, but to act as an advocate for autistic children (does anyone have any evidence of Harolds actual offline contribution to autism advocacy? If so I’d like to see it).

The fact that he does this through inaccurate, often irrelevant, statements heavily influenced by his experiences with his son and in a condecending manner does not neccisarily qualify him as a ‘troll’.

He certianly isn’t very well informed, and is quite possibly a nicer person in real life than he comes across on the blogs he infests, but he certianly isn’t worthy of disrupting this thread.