Nursery World - Autism campaign will aim to arrest attention

A powerful advertising campaign to raise public awareness of autism was unveiled last week by the National Autistic Society at the start of its 40th anniversary year. An advertisement being shown in cinemas before the film 'Iris', about writer Iris Murdoch succumbing to Alzheimer's disease, and on television after the 9pm watershed, shows a child actor portraying a boy at the low-performing end of the autistic spectrum who is rhythmically banging his head against a wall. It ends, 'Now you know what it's like trying to understand autism.' Fiona Farrell, a former presenter for 'London News' and 'Sky News', whose five-year-old son is autistic, described the advertisement as heartbreaking. 'It reminded me of the day it dawned on me that there was something wrong with my son,' she said. She praised the National Autistic Society for being 'a lifeline' to her when she discovered her son was autistic and said it had helped her to meet similarly affected mothers.

An advertisement being shown in cinemas before the film 'Iris', about writer Iris Murdoch succumbing to Alzheimer's disease, and on television after the 9pm watershed, shows a child actor portraying a boy at the low-performing end of the autistic spectrum who is rhythmically banging his head against a wall. It ends, 'Now you know what it's like trying to understand autism.' Fiona Farrell, a former presenter for 'London News' and 'Sky News', whose five-year-old son is autistic, described the advertisement as heartbreaking. 'It reminded me of the day it dawned on me that there was something wrong with my son,' she said. She praised the National Autistic Society for being 'a lifeline' to her when she discovered her son was autistic and said it had helped her to meet similarly affected mothers.

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