At 70, Catherine Barthélémy, professor of child psychiatry from Tours, will be rewarded Thursday, December 8 by the price of Inserm (National Institute of health and medical research). This Honorary Award is a way of congratulating her on her 40-year career devoted to autism work.
Despite the recognition of her peers, the specialist has not always won unanimous support within the scientific community. For good reason, in the 1980s, she was the first to insist on the need for early treatment of patients suffering from autism, arousing the annoyance and skepticism of some researchers.
Interested in origins of autism, she argued that the origin of this disorder was much more complex than previously thought and had multifactorial causes, with a strong presence of genetic factors. According to her, this disorder was not explained by parental education but by abnormalities in the development of the brain. His investigations led him to identify that the earlier a child is diagnosed (for example around 18 months or two years), the more he benefits from adapted care. A message that she tirelessly continues to hammer home: we must “train doctors so that they identify as early as possible small clinical, neurological or morphological signs in children,” she told AFP.
Despite the raised eyebrows of researchers during her career, Catherine Barthélémy has not deviated from her guideline, going so far as to shake up the received ideas, still numerous, around autism.
The researcher therefore sees this award as a symbol of the progress made in recent decades: “It’s great! It’s a triple recognition: of a team (from the University of Tours, Editor’s note) where everyone is fully involved , from the nurse to the researcher via the speech therapist; (of) that autism is not a shameful disease, that it deserves research; of the parents’ fight to do research ” , insists the scientist quoted by AFP.
The psychoanalytic approach in debate
This announcement comes as shrinks and MPs wrangle over recognition of thepsychoanalytic approach to care autism. Coincidence or not, it is tomorrow, the same day as the Inserm prize-giving ceremony, that 94 deputies will present to the National Assembly a resolution for “prohibit psychoanalytic practices in all their forms “in the management of autism.
#Autism. Researcher Catherine Barthélémy receives 1 prize from Inserm https://t.co/tje4n9WteVpic.twitter.com/NxwMNhFt2P
– Inserm (@Inserm) December 7, 2016
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