This week, Penn State hosted the National Autism Conference, which is designed to inform students, professionals, educators, families and others about autism spectrum disorders.
This is the 18th year the university has hosted the four-day conference at the Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel.
Penn State holds various conferences and speaker series throughout the year at facilities like the conference center and the Nittany Lion Inn, but with this one usually in the summer, and not in walking distance to the main campus, its important to remember that it does happen and helps many people.
Autism typically enters the media conversation these days with discussions about controversies including the cause of the disorder.
However, much of this conference focused on treatment and how to help people adapt to a lifestyle on the autism spectrum.
Living and dealing with it on a daily and lifelong basis are the important pieces that experts, families and students come to this conference for. Its an important part of our university to bring these experts and resources together in order to better understand a topic as complicated as the autism spectrum.
Many of the basic facets of everyday life are made exponentially more challenging with something like an autism spectrum disorder, including one of the topics of the conference dating and sexuality in adolescents with autism.
This facet of the disorder isnt something we think about every day, or even one of the main concerns we might think about dealing with autism.
But it is in fact a challenge for families with children who fall on the autism spectrum.
One mother of a 16-year-old-girl with autism attended the event and said the discussion on dating was beneficial because its a subject people want to shy away from.
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National Autism Conference opens up discussions on important topics