Given the significant core deficits in social interaction and communication that children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) demonstrate, it is critical to understand and develop interventions which directly address these needs. This book considers the theoretical and practical implications of developing and implementing peer-based, group-focused therapeutic approaches with children on the autism spectrum. Albert Cotugno describes the theoretical underpinnings of an intervention model based on cognitive developmental principles, and explains why a group approach is best suited to address and remediate an ASD child's social deficiencies. Group Interventions for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders shows how to implement skill-based instructional approaches and presents strategies to assess the short- and long-term effectiveness of this type of therapy, both within the group and in external settings. The book is intended for school, clinic, and general practitioners involved in group work with special needs children, professionals working with ASD children, and anyone interested in using group interventions as a means to treat social competency and social skills deficits.

Children are being diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders at a staggering rate—as many as one in 110, according to some studies. To this sobering statistic add the familiar figures of the toddler disengaged from his peers, the middle schooler shunned in the lunchroom, and the adult struggling with social cues on the job, and professionals are faced with a mounting challenge: to assist and support young people with these disorders to ensure their successful transition to adolescence and adulthood. The first volume dedicated solely to its topic, Interventions for Autism Spectrum Disorders provides a comprehensive overview of programs currently in use. Contributors explore programs focusing on long-term outcomes, home- and classroom-based strategies, resilience training for parents, and pharmacological management of symptoms. Background chapters review issues in reliability and validity of interventions and evaluating treatment effectiveness. And an especially cogent chapter discusses the centrality of treatment integrity to best practice. Comprehensive programs and targeted interventions covered include: The Early Start Denver Model for young children. The TEACCH program for children, adults, and families. The Center for Autism and Related Disorders (CARD) and CARD eLearning. PROGress: a program for remediating and expanding social skills. Evidence-based strategies for repetitive behaviors and sensory issues. Self-regulation strategies for students with autism spectrum disorders. Interventions for Autism Spectrum Disorders is an essential resource for researchers, professionals/practitioners, and clinicians in a wide array of fields, including clinical child, school, and developmental psychology; child and adolescent psychiatry; education; rehabilitation medicine/therapy; social work; and pediatrics.

Autism is an emerging area of basic and clinical research, and has only recently been recognized as a major topic in biomedical research. Approximately 1 in 150 children are diagnosed as autistic, so it is also an intense growth area in behavioral and educational treatments. Financial resources have begun to be raised for more comprehensive research and an increasing number of scientists are becoming involved in autism research. In many respects, autism has become a model for conducting translational research on a psychiatric disorder. This text provides a comprehensive summary of all current knowledge related to the behavioral, experiential, and biomedical features of the autism spectrum disorders including major behavioral and cognitive syndromology, common co-morbid conditions, neuropathology, neuroimmunology, and other neurological correlates such as seizures, allergy and immunology, gastroenterology, infectious disease, and epidemiology. Edited by three leading researchers, this volume contains over 80 chapters and nine shorter commentaries by thought leaders in the field, making the book a virtual "who's who" of autism research. This carefully developed book is a comprehensive and authoritative reference for what we know in this area as well as a guidepost for the next several years in all areas of autism research.

Current rates of autism diagnoses have been cause for concern and research as well as rumor and misinformation. Important questions surround the condition: how early can an accurate diagnosis be made? At what age should intervention start? How can parents recognize warning signs? And what causes autism in the first place? There are no easy answers, but the Handbook of Early Intervention for Autism Spectrum Disorders gives researchers, practitioners, and academics the science and guidance to better understand and intervene. Background chapters survey the history of professional understanding of the disorders and the ongoing debate over autism as a single entity or a continuum. Chapters on best methods in screening, assessment, and diagnosis reflect the transition between the DSM-V and older diagnostic criteria. And at the heart of the book, the intervention section ranges from evidence-based strategies for developing core skills to ethical concerns, cultural considerations, and controversial treatments. Included in the Handbook's broad-based coverage: Designing curriculum programs for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Mainstream education for children with ASD. Teaching independent living skills to children with ASD. Social skills and play. Behavioral and mental health disorders in children with ASD. Training and supporting caregivers in evidence-based practices. Teaching cognitive skills to children with ASD. The Handbook of Early Intervention for Autism Spectrum Disorders is a comprehensive reference for researchers, professors, and graduate students as well as clinicians and other scientist-practitioners in clinical child and school psychology, child and adolescent psychiatry, social work, rehabilitation, special education, and pediatric medicine.

Building a child’s “social repertoire” for more effective autism treatment. Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are an alarmingly prevalent topic of conversation in the news, in pediatrician and therapists’ offices, in classrooms, among concerned parents, and at home, within families. The rate of diagnoses seems only to rise. It’s not surprising that professionals who work with kids on the autism spectrum are eager for effective resources on how to help children and their parents or caregivers manage it. And with this book, readers have a new tool to add to their arsenal. Drawing on her work at the Yale Child Study Center, Koenig explains how critical it is for kids to not simply learn new social skills that fit their individual needs, but to be able to seamlessly integrate them into a range of day-to-day situations, from the classroom to the lunchroom to the dinner table at home. Building their "social repertoire" in this way, she argues, is key to effective autism treatment. Unlike other autism books that tend to be prescriptive in their approach to social skills training, this one teaches that the best social interventions are evidence-based, child-specific, and meaningfully integrated. Guiding readers through the overarching considerations and principles for designing successful social interventions, Koenig presents a host of specific techniques—visual strategies and supports, scripts and role play, developmental play approaches, video modeling, peer mediated approaches, technology-based instruction, group instruction, self-monitoring strategies, parent-delivered interventions, and much more. Case vignettes illustrate how each intervention can be implemented, and what trouble-shooting techniques can be used when a child isn’t responding well. Koenig also provides advice on how parents and professionals can work together as a team, how to help kids “generalize” their newly learned skills across contexts, and how to measure progress in a sensible way. With a foreword by renowned child psychiatrist Fred Volkmar, Practical Social Skills for Autism Spectrum Disorders is sophisticated in its methodology but highly accessible, hands-on, and user-friendly. An invaluable manual for clinicians, educators, school counselors and administrators, parents, and all those who work with kids on the autism spectrum, it unravels the nuances of effective social skills training by showing how to really create intervention programs that take kids' own aptitudes and needs into account. With time, the right teaching, and compassion, they can achieve a life of full engagement with their families and communities.

Developing novel and more effective treatments that improve quality of life for individuals with autism spectrum disorders is urgently needed. To date a wide range of behavioral interventions have been shown to be safe and effective for improving language and cognition and adaptive behavior in children and adolescents with ASD. However many people with ASD can receive additional benefit from targeted pharmacological interventions. One of the major drawback in setting up therapeutics intervention is the remarkable individual differences found across individuals with ASD. As a matter of fact the medications that are currently available address only symptoms associated with ASD and not the core domains of social and communication dysfunction. The pathogenesis paradigm shift of ASD towards synaptic abnormalities moved the research to pathway to disease that involve multiple systems and that are becoming the forefront of ASD treatment and are pointing toward the development of new targeted treatments. Some new therapeutics have been tested and others are being studied. In this context single gene disorders frequently associated with ASD such as Rett Syndrome, Fragile X and Tuberous Sclerosis have been of significant aid as neurobiology of these disorders is more clear and has a potential to shed light on the altered signaling in ASD. However much research is needed to further understand the basic mechanisms of disease and the relationship to idiopathic ASD. Clinical trials in children are underway with agents directed to core symptoms and to the associated disorders in the search of new therapeutics and progress are expected with possible new option for therapeutics in ASD in the upcoming future. Children and Adolescents with ASD and their families can provide important information about their experience with new treatments and this should be a priority for future research. In addition, research performed on genetic mouse models of ASD will keep on providing useful information on the molecular pathways dysrupted in the disease, thus contributing to identify novel drug targets.

This issue of Psychiatric Clinics, guest-edited by Drs. Robert Wisner-Carlson, Thomas Flis, Scott Pekrul, and Robert Schloesser will discuss a number of important topics addressing Autism Disorders Across the lifespan. This issue is one of four each year selected by our series consulting editor, Dr. Harsh Trivedi of Sheppard Pratt Health System. Part I of this issue published previously. Articles in this issue include: Bipolar Disorder and Psychosis in Autism; Catatonia in Patients with Autism Spectrum Disorder; Use of Electroconvulsive Therapy in Autism; Autism Spectrum Disorder and Substance Use Disorder: A Dual Diagnosis Hiding in Plain Sight; Seizures and Epilepsy in Autism Spectrum Disorder; Gastrointestinal Issues and Autism Spectrum Disorder; The Impact of Applied Behavior Analysis to Address Mealtime Behaviors of Concern Among Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder; Assessment and Treatment of Emotion Regulation Impairment in Autism Spectrum Disorder Across the Life Span: Current State of the Science and Future Directions; Sexuality and Gender Issues in Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder; and Facial Expression Production and Recognition in Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Shifting Landscape.

This book provides a comprehensive outline of the major parent training programs for parents of children with intellectual or developmental disabilities (IDD), including Autism Spectrum Disorder. Parents or primary caregivers spend the most time with a child, and training them in behaviour management and intervention strategies is critical to improving a child's behaviour, to helping them to learn new skills, and to reduce parental stress. Authored by eminent specialists in the field and written for researchers and clinicians supporting or treating families, each chapter focuses on one of the key evidence-based parent training programs - from Incredible Years® and Positive Family Intervention through to Pivotal Response Treatment and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Each chapter provides a breakdown that features an introduction to the model, evidence for the model, a full description of the model, a discussion of implementation and dissemination efforts, and concluding comments. Grounded in research, this definitive overview provides the evidence and guidance required for anyone considering investing in or running a parenting program.

Anxiety in Children and Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Evidence-Based Assessment and Treatment begins with a general overview of the history of research on anxiety in ASD and the path towards evidence-based assessment and treatment methods. Thereafter, chapters focus on the nature of ASD and anxiety comorbidity, the assessment of anxiety in ASD, and its treatment. Later chapters are devoted to future directions for research on this topic, including a discussion of anxiety assessment and treatment for adults and minimally verbal individuals. Anxiety disorders in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can cause substantial distress and impairment over and above that caused by ASD alone. Emerging research on genetic, psychological, psychophysiological, and psychometric aspects of ASD establish anxiety as a valid and necessary treatment target in this population. This book is designed to help a broad array of providers who work with children with ASD understand cutting-edge, empirically supported treatments for anxiety, including specific treatment plans and strategies. - Presents a balanced discussion of the scientific literature on anxiety in ASD - Provides a pragmatic, clinically applied focus that gives readers a 'how-to' guide for the treatment of anxiety in ASD - Considers the distinct ways in which anxiety presents in children and adolescents with ASD and the challenges this presents to assessment and treatment - Examines emerging areas of anxiety assessment and treatment research in ASD