Excerpt from Mixed Blessings By William and Barbara Chistopher

1989 Abingdon Press, Nashville, TN Pages 203-204

 "In July we had the great good luck to attend the annual conference of the Autism Society of America (at the time called the National Society for Autistic Children and Adults), which was held in Los Angeles that year. [...] Then Dr. Paul Hardy from Massachusetts presented a moving lecture about seriously self-injurious kids who has been helped with medication to prevent panic-anxiety disorder, which had everyone in the audience in tears. Some things he said struck both Barbara and me as descriptive of Ned's attacks on himself. We talked to Dr. Hardy later in the day, and he said that rather than panic-anxiety attacks, it sounded to him as if Ned might be having temporal lobe seizures. He offered to discuss his ideas with the physician at Devereux.

Dr. Hardy was as good as his word, and very soon Devereux started Ned on a trial period of Tegretol. Miraculously, the self-injurious behavior disappeared---immediately! Reluctant as we were to have Ned on another medication, this one seemed necessary."