Effects of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy on Anxiety in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Randomized Controlled Trial
Doesn’t the name of this article just make you want to figure out what it’s going to be about? It did for me and after seeing the name of this study I found myself more than interested. Going into this paper I had no idea of what to write about. When I seen the title of this study, I immediately wanted to find out more about what cognitive-behavioral therapy is, and how it was used on children with Autism Spectrum Disorders, also known as ASD, and those that suffer from an anxiety disorder. My mom is a special education teacher at an elementary school so I have been around Autism for quite a while and I had never heard of ASD. Through further research, I found that ASD is just a broader term than Autism. Autism is just a specific diagnosis, as to where ASD is a category that withholds similar disorders.
In this 16-week program, the effects of a Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) program, and a Social Recreational (SR) program, on children that suffer from an anxiety disorder and Autism Spectrum Disorder was compared. The study was conducted on seventy children, varying in age from nine, to sixteen years old. What was being looked at was a comparison of two different programs being conducted on these children. The purpose was to find if there was some type of relation between the anxiety and the ASD. Also it was looked into if the anxiety in these children could be controlled.
It is said that the Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, aids in the treatment of anxiety symptoms in children that are not diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. If this works for the non-disabled children, why would it not work for a child with ASD? There are similarities in children with ASD and to those that are clinically anxious. The hypothesis was clearly stated that, the children affected by ASD would show improvements in reported measure of
Cited: Sung, M., Phaik, O., Goh, T. J., Pathy, P., Fung, D. S. S., Ang, R. P., Chua, A., Lam, C.M. (10 june 2011) Effects of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy on Anxiety in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Child Psychiatry Hum Dev, 42:634- 649.