At 70, Catherine Barthélémy, professor of child psychiatry from Tours, will be rewarded Thursday, December 8 by the Inserm prize (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 been unanimous within the scientific community. For good reason, as early as 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 certain researchers.
Interested in origins of autism, she defended 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 brain development. His investigations led him to identify that the earlier a child is diagnosed (for example around 18 months or two years), the more it benefits from appropriate support. A message that she continues to relentlessly hammer home: we must “train doctors so that they identify as early as possible the small clinical, neurological or morphological signs in children”, she explains to 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 still numerous received ideas around autism.
The researcher therefore sees this prize as a symbol of the progress made in recent decades: “It’s great! It’s a triple recognition: from 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 parents’ fight for research to be done” , insists the scientist quoted by AFP.
The psychoanalytic approach under debate
This announcement comes at a time when shrinks and deputies are quarreling over the recognition of thepsychoanalytical approach to care autism. Coincidence or not, it is tomorrow, the same day as the Inserm prize-giving, that 94 deputies will present a resolution to the National Assembly to “prohibit psychoanalytical practices in all their forms” in the management of autism.
#Autism. Researcher Catherine Barthélémy receives 1 Inserm prize https://t.co/tje4n9WteVpic.twitter.com/NxwMNhFt2P
— Inserm (@Inserm) December 7, 2016
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