Autism
| Alternative treatment focuses on controlling the ‘fight or flight’ response may help young people diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder could help them navigate their world by teaching them to turn their symptoms into strengths. |
A novel approach to treating children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder could help them navigate their world by teaching them to turn their symptoms into strengths.
In the article “Symptoms as Solutions: Hypnosis and Biofeedback for Autonomic Regulation in Autism Spectrum Disorders,” published in the winter edition of the American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, Dr. Laurence Sugarman, a pediatrician and researcher at Rochester Institute of Technology, details a treatment method that teaches affected children how to control their psychophysiology and behavior using computerized biofeedback and clinical hypnosis.
The article coincides with the publication of the second edition of Sugarman’s textbook, Therapeutic Hypnosis with Children and Adolescents, written with William Wester.
Sugarman’s model is tied to learning to self-regulate the autonomic nervous system—including the fight or flight mechanism—that, for many people with autism, is an engine idling on high.
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His treatment model underlies three ongoing projects at the center involving different age groups: teaching coping skills to RIT students with anxiety or autism; developing a computer-based role-playing game using autonomous biofeedback for teenagers; and creating a new service and research program for family members with autism for AutismUp (formerly Upstate New York Families for Effective Autism Treatment). The latter, called the Parent Effectiveness Program, began this fall and will repeat in the spring. The study trains parents of young children diagnosed with autism and measures results of their training on the behaviors of their affected children.
Sugarman developed his method in response to the rise in autism spectrum disorders he has witnessed in his 30 years working with children in primary care and, then, in developmental behavioral pediatrics at the Easter Seals Diagnostic and Treatment Center in Rochester. Instead of trying to change the symptoms associated with autism, his approach recognizes the symptoms as an effort to self-regulate inner turmoil.
Sugarman is a proponent of clinical hypnosis. He is the past-president of the American Board of Medical Hypnosis, the credentialing body for competency in clinical hypnosis for physicians in the United States. He also has a long association with the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis as an approved consultant, fellow in clinical hypnosis, past vice president and past co-director of education for the society.
“Hypnosis is a 250-year-old Western study of how social influence and internal physiology can be changed,” he says. “Mindfulness is a slice of this.”
Sugarman teaches pediatric hypnosis workshops around the world. This fall, he presented at the Regional Center for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in Oslo, Norway, and the Milton Erickson Geselleschaft in Heidelberg, Germany. In Heidelberg, Sugarman also presented his treatment model and research using biofeedback and hypnosis with children with autism receiving “very affirmative responses.”
“We think we can make a big difference for young people with autism spectrum disorder,” Sugarman says. “The need is there.”
SOURCE Rochester Institute of Technology
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