TVScope: The "make me normal" plea of 13-year-old Roxanne, who has autism, provided the apt title for this, the first in a new series of documentaries entitled Only Human.
Pupils in a school in London specialising in autism were filmed over four months and Roxanne, Roy (19), Esther (18) and Moneer (12) told in their own words how difficult it is for them to grow up with autism. People with autism can be affected to a hugely different extent, but all have difficulty with social relationships, and. They also have impaired imagination, leading to some pursuing the same activity repetitively. The tragedy for the young people in this programme was their own awareness that they were different from other people. Roy had an obsessive interest in Eastenders and could talk for hours about the show, but all he really wanted was a girlfriend.
When he fell for Kirsty, he was no different from any other teenager experiencing the thrill of first love. When Kirsty switched her attentions to another, he was unable to describe his emotional pain, only that tears had come to his eyes and he wondered aloud "what's that emotion called?"
He was more fortunate than Esther though, who fancied lots of boys but experienced only rejection. She was acutely aware of her inability to fit in with other young women of her own age. She longed to be like them in "the real world", able to have a laugh and joke with friends. She believed that her autism condemned her to a life on the outside looking in, and she challenged us to tell her what in her life was worth living for. We had no answer for Esther or, even more painfully, for Roxanne, who had a history of attacking staff.
Roxanne described how guilty she felt about being born the way she was, and all the hurting and anger that went with her autism. The more Roxanne learned about autism, the more distressed she became about the fact that she could not make it go away. It was disturbing to witness a distraught Roxanne acting out this distress by deliberately hurting herself, while the rest of her class carried on obliviously with their sing-song. Did we have the right to see this?
We could ask the same question about Moneer, a very verbal, intelligent boy with Asperger's syndrome, who was filmed in the months just after his mother's death from cancer. His emotional pain was so great he was unable to cope with being in the same room as other children without attacking them. It was only when left on his own with a video camera that he was able to express his anguish about how he would never now have the opportunity to tell his mother how sorry he was for all the hurt he had caused her as a result of his Asperger's. This documentary showed us that the desires and fears of young people with autism are no different from our own. What is different is their ability to deal with them. However, it sometimes strayed over the fine line between the need for education about autism and the rights of those afflicted to their privacy. We are unable to respond to Roxanne's plea to make her normal, but we can show those with autism the same respect we "normals" expect for ourselves.
More information on www.channel4.com/family
Olive Travers is a clinical psychologist.