Group therapy helps autistic children to cope
Children and teens with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) can cope better with everyday life if they attend group therapy.
Goethe University Frankfurt researchers examined 209 children and teens aged eight to 18 in the course of three years.
“We often encounter children and adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder in clinical practice who would like to communicate with youngsters of their own age and at the same time experience every day that they meet with rejection because they are unable to understand many of their classmates’ behaviour patterns. And this causes them to despair”, explains Professor Christine Freitag, Head of the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy. Together with Dr. Hannah Cholemkery, she has developed a behavioural group therapy programme with instructions and exercises for the improvement of social skills.
Therapy took place once a week over the course of three months in a group with four to five youngsters of the same age and two therapists. There were also three parent evenings. The results were compared with those of a wait list control group. There was a clear improvement in social behaviour in the intervention group, which also remained stable after three months when examined again.
In particular children with severe symptoms and a higher IQ at the beginning of the therapy were able to profit from it.
Category: Features, Wellness and Complementary Therapies
