Recovering Ruffin

Directed by Katy Krauland

In 1994, Ruffin White was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder; his case was so severe that his neurologist predicted that he would never speak, hold a job, or be able to live independently. With scant professional resources available in Ruffin's rural Iowa town, his single mother, Mary Jane White, was forced to be creative in order to get Ruffin treatment, even recruiting the local community to assist in Applied Behavior Analysis therapy, an evidence-based behavioral therapy focused on the science of learning and behavior. Today, Ruffin is about to graduate from UCSD with a PhD in Robotics. RECOVERING RUFFIN is a documentary short that chronicles Ruffin's "recovery" from Autism while lending credence to the axiom "It takes a village to raise a child."