Understanding Mental Health: conditions, caring, and contexts - Prof. Uta Frith

Autism is a neuro-developmental disorder with a prevalence of about one in 100 births. Although we assume that this disorder has always been with us, and Rab Houston and I identified a case from the 18th century, it was not given a label until the 1940s. Hans Asperger, a Viennese pediatrician, and Leo Kanner, an American child psychiatrist, both used the label ‘autistic’ to characterise the condition. It took another thirty years until it was understood that it was not rare, but there was a whole spectrum of autistic conditions, all sharing the core symptoms of impaired social communication and repetitive and restricted behaviours. To explain these symptoms I mention two proposals: the ‘Theory of mind’ account, explaining the communication impairment; the ‘Weak central coherence account’, explaining the focus on detail.

Uta Frith is Emeritus Professor of Cognitive Development at UCL’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience.

History of Psychiatry Podcast Series

Rab Houston was born in Hamilton, Scotland, lived in India and Ghana and was educated at the Edinburgh Academy and St Andrews University before spending six years at Cambridge University as a research student (Peterhouse) and research fellow (Clare College). He has worked at the University of St Andrews since 1983 and is Professor of Modern History, specialising in British social history. He is a fellow of both the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Society of Edinburgh (Scotland’s national academy), and a member of the Academia Europaea. He is married to a senior university manager and lives in Edinburgh. In his spare time he likes any form of active meditation.
http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/staff/rabhouston.html
https://arts.st-andrews.ac.uk/psychhist/

• No. of episodes: 121
• Latest episode: 2021-12-06
• Education

Where can you listen?