Effectiveness of Evidence-Based Mental Health Practices for Youth with Autism Supported by Online Consultation to Practitioners in Community and Navy Clinics
Abstract
School-aged youth (6-14 years old) with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) commonly experience significant problems with emotion regulation (i.e., frustration, distress, and anxiety) that significantly impact their quality of life and ability to cope with the demands of school, family life, and peer relationships. These difficulties with emotion regulation often lead youth with ASD to seek mental health services in community health settings such as military medical centers and clinics. Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) helps reduce the emotional regulation difficulties experienced by youth with ASD. However, therapies with strong scientific evidence such as CBT are rarely delivered in the community mental health centers where youth with ASD most often receive services (e.g., military and other government facilities; free/low-fee community settings). It thus is important to see whether therapies with strong research evidence, such as CBT, can be effective in community mental health centers where youth with ASD receive therapy. A significant barrier to the goal of implementing promising therapies like CBT into community mental health centers is training clinicians (counselors, therapists) how to implement the therapy with expertise. CBT is moderately complex as a technique and incorporates practices that many mental health clinicians have either never tried or, in some cases, never mastered (e.g., systematic desensitization). The expense of live training and in-person follow-up consultation is cost-prohibitive on the scale needed (i.e., nationwide). Therefore, the use of internet-based technology (e.g., video-conferencing) for providing training and consultation to mental health clinicians in military, government, and other low-fee/free community mental health centers is an appealing and cost-effective alternative to in-person training and consultation. This study will use video-conferencing to train and support clinicians in CBT who are working with youth with ASD. The main questions we will address are: Is CBT effective for youth with ASD who have emotion regulation difficulties? Do any particular factors about how clinicians access the training and consultation (such as the amount of time and effort they put into it; how much they actually learn from this training method; and their attitude about the therapy) make a difference in the children’s therapy outcomes? The FY20 ARP Clinical Trial Award Areas of Interest to be studied include: 1. Dissemination/Implementation of Clinically Validated Interventions 2. Behavioral, Cognitive, and Other Non-Pharmacological Therapies for ASD Core Symptoms or to Alleviate Co-occurring Conditions 3. Healthcare Provider-Focused Training or Tools to Improve Healthcare Delivery for Individuals with ASD Across the Lifespan and the Continuum of Care The primary goal of this project is to determine whether CBT is more effective than the usual clinical services provided to youth with ASD in the types of community settings where they are most likely to receive mental health services such as military insurance-funded clinics and state-government funded mental health centers. Consistent with the vision of the ARP Clinical Trial Award, this study has the potential to have a major and immediate impact on the treatment of youth with ASD. Enhancing the way that therapy is provided in everyday treatment settings for youth with ASD may be able to impact outcomes big and small: the ability of youth with ASD to handle their emotions that otherwise can incapacitate them in the typical daily life settings where they spend most of their time—at home, in school, with siblings and peers, when doing work or playing with others. Considering that emotional and behavioral challenges are at or near the top of the priority list for many parents of youth with ASD, families of youth with ASD may benefit substantially from the youth’s improved emotional regulation abilities, possibly leading to
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Dec 05, 2021
- Source ID
- W81XWH2110334
Entities
People
- Jeffrey Wood
Organizations
- United States Army
- University of California, Los Angeles