Feeling abandoned and overwhelmed, families are turning to controversial new therapies backed by the US health secretary

Landyn Holdren is an eight-year-old autistic child who has high support needs and is nonspeaking. His mother, Christy Holdren, says he can be self-harming, slapping his chest, face or head when distressed.

Later this month, she will spend $15,000 on an unapproved stem cell treatment she hopes might help him.

As she prepares to mark 70 with a birthday concert, the musician talks about her destructive mindset – and the steps she took to finally make sense of her life and music’s part in it

It was 2023. The holiday of a lifetime, in Australia, had begun, after two weeks at the Australian festival of chamber music, in which I’d played viola in several of my own works. I had fretted about this for months, not really believing that I could stand up as a soloist and deliver. Even as a full-time viola-player in the 80s, I avoided solo playing – always feeling more at home in larger chamber groups. But as my husband Peter and I set off on our holiday, I was euphoric. I had performed with the marvellous young pianist Joseph Havlat, with the legendary accordionist James Crabb and virtuoso trumpeter David Elton – and all had gone well.

But then came a horrible realisation: I had not asked for the concerts to be recorded. This had been a moment in my life that would never be repeated. And I hadn’t captured it. I sank into despair. The fact that this is a pattern in my thinking didn’t make it any less painful: the more wonderful the event, the more likely I am to find regrets to attach to it. It is a destructive mindset I have learned to live with, but for years I had no idea why my head seemed compelled to ruin every joyful memory.

Campaigners say supreme court judgment on deprivation of liberty safeguards introduces ‘regressive legal standard’

Severely disabled people will be at heightened risk of abuse in care homes and hospitals after the biggest upheaval in disability law in a generation overturned “vital” legal safeguards, campaigners have warned.

They said a supreme court judgment that potentially strips the right of hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people to independent checks on the safety and appropriateness of their care “devalues the dignity of disabled people”.

From single mothers to fathers of autistic children and fellow adoptees – some relationships come along just when you need them the most

Lucy Crowe and Mikayla Jolley, London

Researchers say risk comes from ‘other factors, including genetic predisposition to mental health conditions’

Taking antidepressants during pregnancy does not increase the risk of children going on to develop autism or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), according to an analysis of more than half a million pregnancies.

The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Hong Kong and published in the Lancet Psychiatry, analysed data from 37 existing studies that included 600,000 pregnant women who had taken antidepressants, and 25 million women who had no antidepressant use during their pregnancies.

Can a sentence affect the course of your life? Five authors reveal the interactions that transformed the way they saw themselves – and the world

When I was 14, I had to start a new school. I wasn’t great at starting new schools, even though I had done so quite a few times – once for my dad’s work, once because I wasn’t fitting in at my primary school and once because my parents didn’t like the teachers. Of course, 14 is possibly the most awkward of all the ages to start a new anything. Anyway, it was halfway through the first term at the new school in Newark, Nottinghamshire, and I was taken aside by my history teacher, Mr Philips, at the end of a lesson. He didn’t like me very much. To be fair, I was probably hard to like, from a teacher’s perspective. I had trouble concentrating, I stared out of windows, I clowned around. However, it is difficult to explain the shock to my self-conscious teenage soul when he told me, “I think it would be a good idea for you to join a special needs class.” Now, for context, the year was 1989, and in my state comprehensive at that time the idea of being “special needs” was akin to being given a leprosy bell or being marked with a cross for the plague. It was a binary system. You were either “normal” or you were “special needs”. To make matters worse, I was told that another teacher – my art teacher – had come to a similar assessment.

As a child, Brown was underestimated, infantilised and dismissed by specialists and teachers. Now 28, he has written an acclaimed debut novel set in an adult day care centre that gives people like him a voice

‘May I say that I’m very glad to meet you,”  Woody Brown taps on his word board. Brown is formal, funny and strikingly eloquent. He has a formidable ability to tell stories that reach into the mind of his characters and express what they are thinking, and what they think others are thinking about them. Brown is also autistic and non-speaking.

His first novel, Upward Bound, tells the story of everyday life at the eponymous adult day care centre in southern California. The title is ironic – the young adults, referred to as clients, are anything but upward bound. By and large, they are stifled, patronised, unheard and unseen. Despite their shortcomings, the staff are portrayed with a surprising tenderness.

A combination of autism and ADHD caused outbursts, confusion and stress that my son couldn’t understand – until he saw David Tennant behaving the same way

The film Elf is a no-go in our house. My son interprets it as the psychological horror story of a man who is telling the truth but is constantly disbelieved. He loves The Traitors and rewatches entire series of it – knowing who the traitors are gives him an autonomy and comfort watching the game. Any other kind of conflict on screen and he’ll leave the room or wind it forward. I tried to explain that there are no stories without conflict. It made no difference.

My son is autistic and has ADHD – what’s sometimes referred to as AuDHD. We’ve always called him “fizzy”. He’s often the noisiest person in a room but hates too much noise. He’s incredibly sociable and wants so desperately to be part of the fun but finds the fun stressful. I had never seen anyone like him represented on screen.

When James Hunt began posting about his boys online, it was a way to describe the emotions and experiences of their extraordinary lives. In sharing his family’s joy and struggles, he realised they weren’t alone

My conversation with James Hunt begins the usual way: an exchange of hellos, followed by the most mundane of questions. “How are you?” I ask.

Although he responds predictably – “I’m all right … I’m good” – we both know that underneath this answer lurks a whole world of experience, and the plain fact that some people’s everyday lives are lived in extraordinary circumstances.

This sappy and ill-conceived tale about an architect, his autistic son and a lifesize toy bear suffers from sanctimonious religious messaging and dreadful dialogue

Anyone with autism or close to someone with the condition might feel inclined to be forbearing of this family drama about a father and his autistic son, given its plea for acceptance and love. But yikes – it is so sappy, ill-conceived and bloated with sanctimonious religious messaging, it is a slog to get through. If, however, you feel that watching it is almost an act of charity in itself (apparently some of the proceeds will go toward supporting carers), admire this at least for being one of the few feature films that tries to depict more challenged autistic people who need support (also known by the now-contested label of “low functioning”). Also to its credit, the film opens with a disclaimer that acknowledges that “the autism spectrum is wide and varied” and that “this film reflects the individual experiences of two characters and is not intended to represent every autistic story”.

The main character here is Elijah (played as a child by Reece Turley and then as an adult by Caleb Milby), a young man first met just after a violent meltdown that has ravaged the family’s Christmas decorations. Elijah’s father Ty (John Wells) attempts to comfort the distraught teen, with help from Elijah’s favourite stuffed toy, polar bear Nook. Flashforward seven years, and Elijah is now in some kind of secure hospital, barely distinguishable from a jail, partly because his mother Pam (Layla Cushman), divorced from Ty, just wants to offload him on the state and wash her hands of him while Ty struggles to maintain his career as an architect.

Category describes people who have little or no language, an IQ of less than 50 and require 24-hour supervision

When it comes to autism, few questions spark as much debate as how best to support autistic people with the greatest needs.

This prompted the Lancet medical journal to commission a group of international experts to propose a new category of “profound autism”.

How many children met the criteria for profound autism?

Were there behavioural features that set this group apart?

By age 20 diagnosis rates for men and women almost equal, research finds, challenging assumptions of gender discrepancy

Females may be just as likely to be autistic as males but boys are up to four times more likely to be diagnosed in childhood, according to a large-scale study.

Research led by the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden scrutinised the diagnosis rates of autism for people born in Sweden between 1985 and 2020. Of the 2.7 million people tracked, 2.8% were diagnosed with autism between the ages of two and 37.

PM says he hopes focus will now shift to the ‘hard yards’ of maintaining security in the Arctic

Andy Burnham may have a new route to parliament after the MP Andrew Gwynne reached a settlement with the Commons that would allow him to retire and call a byelection, Pippa Crerar, Jessica Elgot and Josh Halliday report.

In her Sky News interview this morning, Kemi Badenoch also said she was opposed to the UK joining President Trump’s board of peace if Vladimir Putin is a member. She said:

We should not be, certainly, on any board with Vladimir Putin. That’s something I’m completely against.

As a boy, Tom Stoltman was diagnosed with autism and bullied at school. When he became depressed in his teens, his older brother, a bodybuilder, suggested a trip to the gym

• ‘I was told I wouldn’t walk again. I proved the doctors wrong’: the bike-obsessed pensioner who broke his neck and started afresh

Tom Stoltman was a skinny kid: 90kg, 6ft 8in, with glasses and sticking‑out teeth. Diagnosed with autism as a young child, he felt he didn’t fit in. “I was really shy,” he says. “I got bullied in school for being different.” Back then, the boy from Invergordon didn’t like what he saw in the mirror. He lived in baggy hoodies. “Hood up. That was my comfort.” He loved football but “I used to look at people on the pitch and think, ‘He’s tinier than me, but he’s pushing me off the ball.’”

By 16 he’d hit a “crashing point”. He went from football-obsessed to playing Xbox all day. He’d skip meals in favour of sweets. “Sometimes it was four or five, six bags.”

Taking drug in pregnancy does not raise chances of autism, ADHD or intellectual disability, ‘gold standard’ review finds

Taking paracetamol in pregnancy does not increase the chance that the child will be autistic, or have ADHD or an intellectual disability, a “gold standard” review of the evidence has found.

The findings debunk Donald Trump’s claims last September that the painkiller causes autism, which were condemned by medical, women’s health and scientific organisations around the world.

Company says doll is the latest expansion of its commitment to representation and inclusion

With an animated Barbie film in development, following the success of Greta Gerwig’s 2023 blockbuster movie, Mattel Studios will certainly have a diverse range of characters to bring to life.

On Monday, Mattel launches its first autistic Barbie. Coming barely six months after its first doll with type 1 diabetes, this newest addition to Barbie’s Fashionistas range is designed so that more children “see themselves in Barbie” and to encourage all children to play with dolls that reflect the world around them.

From dark, sound-proofed rooms to clever storage solutions, families with autism and ADHD are finding inspired ways to adjust their environments

In the middle of Cherie Clonan’s bright Melbourne home sits a room in total darkness “for our son to retreat to”, she says. “It’s all black in there. You wouldn’t believe it’s the same home!”

The space, lined with sound-blocking panels, is a sanctuary for her autistic son: a quiet cocoon for decompressing after school. “He loves to go in there to game online with his mates,” Clonan says.

Diagnosed autistic at 37, Clonan lives in a weatherboard cottage with her husband, David, and her two neurodivergent teenagers. Since buying the house five years ago, she has been reshaping it around their needs. “Our family’s split half-half – 50% sensory-seek versus sensory-avoidant,” she says. “I chase light. I love light-filled everything. But my son really is the opposite.”