Dr. Tom Mates
Kevin Yarbrough plays Sonatina

Intently watching his fingers flow over the piano keys, Kevin Yarbrough seems immersed in the music as the vibrant strains of a Clementi sonatina fill the Orange Grove Center music room.

For the 30-year-old man, who has autism and rarely speaks, playing piano is a way to interact with others nonverbally, his piano teacher said.

“I think everybody has to find that one thing in life that helps you speak,” said Monty Parks, music coordinator at Orange Grove, a center for people with developmental disabilities. “I think this gives him a voice.”

Effective and individualized treatments for people with developmental disabilities such as autism can be life-changing, experts said. In Chattanooga, developmental disability and autism specialists are planning a broad collaboration to help those with autism and their families navigate the wide and sometimes confusing array of resources available in the community.

For Mr. Yarbrough’s mother, Nancy, the discovery of music’s calming effect on her son when he began playing at age 7 has been a blessing. His twice-weekly lessons at Orange Grove seem to relieve some of his anxiety and playing soft and loud help him to understand how to control the volume of his own voice, which has always been his challenge, she said.

Without the piano, “I don’t know if he’d ever talk,” Mrs. Yarbrough said.

Mr. Yarbrough was diagnosed with autism in the mid-1980s when the condition was little understood, she said.

“At that time there was no ‘Rain Man,’ there was nothing. There was very (little) awareness even in the medical field,” she said. “There were always people saying, ‘Oh, he’ll talk later.’ But there was more to it, we knew it.”

STUDYING OF RESOURCES

To help those in Mrs. Yarbrough’s situation, Orange Grove Center is leading a push to raise $125,000 to commission a study that would identify all the existing autism resources in Hamilton County, as well as take a census of the number of people with autism here.

The study would help Orange Grove and other organizations determine the best way to establish a centralized autism resource center, said Hal Baker, deputy director at Orange Grove.

Staff Photo by Angela Lewis -- Kevin Yarbrough folds boxes at Orange Grove on Wednesday, and he also takes piano lessons. Orange Grove recently used a Community Foundation grant to retrain staff in autism techniques, and is working to consolidate autism resources in the community.

“It really does take that kind of a network to kind of help families get through this,” said Dr. Steven Altabet, director of clinical services at Team Centers, a private, nonprofit agency in Chattanooga serving people with developmental disabilities.

Team Centers is one of the organizations looking to pool its resources with other autism-related disorders.

“It’s the intention to involve anyone who has an interest in autism spectrum disorders in our community in this process,” including Hamilton County Public Schools, Signal Centers, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Siskin Children’s Institute and the Chattanooga Center for Autism Spectrum Conditions, among others, Mr. Baker said.

The Community Research Council will lead the countywide study, if the funds are raised, said David Eichenthal, president and CEO of the council.

“It’s a comprehensive look at both the needs and resources, with a goal of figuring out how to fill gaps if they exist,” he said.

A GROWING ISSUE

Autism spectrum disorder is a developmental disability, generally diagnosed by 3 years old and marked by impairments in social interaction and communication in varying degrees of severity. The cognitive abilities of people with autism can range from low-functioning to superior intelligence.

Today about one in every 150 children in the United States develops autism or an autism-related condition, according to the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Experts in the field attribute the growth — the incidence of autism was estimated at 1 in 1,500 a couple decades ago — to a more expansive definition of “autism” and the increasing diagnosis of many individuals who may have gone undiagnosed in the past, said Dr. Tom Mates, a clinical psychologist. Dr. Mates is leading training sessions on autism for employees at Orange Grove.

A controversial theory points to mercury in vaccinations as contributors to the increased prevalence of the condition, but research by the Washington, D.C.-based Institute of Medicine does not support that claim. The institute is a nonprofit organization that works to provide unbiased scientific analysis from volunteer scientists.

Signal Mountain resident Sandy Lusk said her son Kyle, now 10, was diagnosed with autism as a toddler. Researching the unfamiliar disease online, she learned the hard way to be wary of false claims of “cures” but was exhausted by the search for how to get help for her son.

The family of “people with autism are already exhausted from just taking care of the child, then to go try to find help and nothing gets done, it’s very frustrating,” she said. “People just need to know they’re not alone and there’s help.”

A centralized resource center such as the one proposed by Orange Grove would be a big help to parents, said Deborah Luehrs, director of marketing and communication for Siskin Children’s Institute.

“There is no continuum of services right now,” she said. “We have a lot of different organizations in town that are looking at maybe one or two components of autism, but we really need a comprehensive approach.”

UPDATING AUTISM TECHNIQUES

Orange Grove also is working to update its employees’ skills in treating autism.

The Community Foundation of Greater Chattanooga recently awarded Orange Grove a $20,000 grant to provide a year’s worth of education on state-of-the-art autism techniques for teachers and direct-care staff at all levels at the center, which employs more than 700 people, according to Mr. Baker.

With grant money, Orange Grove brought in Dr. Mates, formerly the director of a statewide program for people with autism at the University of North Carolina. Last week he gave presentations on new autism techniques to a few hundred employees at Orange Grove.

“There’s a tremendous amount of confusing information now with autism. I think a lot of people are learning about autism unfortunately through the ‘Larry King Show’ and through ‘Oprah,’” Dr. Mates said.

More intensive sessions will carry on throughout the year, Mr. Baker said.

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