This volume aims to provide the reader with an up-to-date account of knowledge, research, education, and clinical practice in the field of au- tism, from an international perspective. The emphasis throughout is on the growing points of knowledge and on the new developments in prac- tice. We have tried to keep a balance between the need for rigorous research and systematic evaluation and the importance of expressing new ideas and concepts so that they may influence thinking at a stage when questions are being formulated and fresh approaches to treatment are being developed. The book had its...

The death of a friend, a colleague, a relative, or a patient can be a devastating experience, particularly when that death is. self deter- mined. It is devastating to us as human beings to lose someone we cared about; it is devastating to us as professionals to wonder what we might have done that could have helped; and it is devastating to us as psychiatrists, because it makes us realize that for all we do know, there is still a great deal more that we do not know. When the person exhibiting suicidal behaviors or completing the act of self-murder (as the Germans call it) is a child or...