ABSTRACT
Samir, aged seven years and nine months, comes from Chechnya, from where the family had fled a year before. Not long before they left for Germany, he spent three months as an in-patient in a children’s neuropsychiatric clinic, where he was diagnosed with progressive autism. In Germany, Samir had been admitted to the child neurology ward for further clarification of his case. I was called in by colleagues to determine whether this was indeed a case of autism or whether he was suffering from some other severe psychiatric illness, and what further measures could be useful from the point of view of child psychiatry.
