My efforts have culminated in the creation of the website mentalhealthinindia.com that can be used as a resource both by people in India as well as those abroad who are curious to learn about the stigma surrounding depression and differently abled children in India.
This project is a wordless children's book about an excluded child with autism who, with the help of a cat, learns to make friends and be happy with who she is. The book is illustrated with water color and acrylic paints and is based on my experiences with autism. The goals for this project were to create representation for autistic people and to give something to younger autistic children to practice their communication. The essay portion of the project details the creation of the project, my inspirations, the research that has been done on how autistic children interact with storytelling and other non written communication, and a reflection on how the project went.
The purpose of this project was to develop a new questionnaire that was comprehensive and included symptoms of autism and related disorders. 28 parents of children with autism and two adults with autism were interviewed and asked to fill out the questionnaire and rate their child’s symptoms based on the available scale. From their responses, we were able to edit and improve the questionnaire to make it clearer and more concise. We added new symptoms and improved the descriptions of the symptoms listed. The new version of the questionnaire will be edited after interviewing the same 30 people again. After, it will need to be validated by a large study of around 300 people. The questionnaire will be used in an app format and help parents rate their child’s symptoms during clinical studies of medical treatments.