Autism Therapy
Autism is one of the widely spread developmental disabilities that affect a person's communication skills and social and family relation management. Different types of therapies are used to treat the autism disorder symptoms. These therapies include Play therapy, Relationship Development Intervention, Applied Behavior therapy, Sensory Integration therapy and DIR therapy. Many patients with autistic conditions have been benefited by these therapies.
Dr. Steve Gutsstein has designed the RDI approach that focuses on improving the quality of life. Hence, this therapy not only trains the patient for routine life and social communication skills but also teaches an individual for self-improvement and to be successful in building the genuine relationships. It is a parent-based program that involves the use of tools for children's motivation and Dynamic Intelligence Skills. These skills include experience sharing, problem solving, episodic memory, self-awareness, dynamic analysis and resilience.
Play therapy is a systematic approach that is designed to serve as an effective tool to treat the mental disorders, anxiety and trauma in the young people. Play therapy helps the children to follow their feelings and find new techniques to solve their psychological problems. Play therapy specialist use Play Project in which play is considered as a tool to develop communication and other skills in autism-affected children. It also includes the educational and social stories that make the children understand their feelings and emotions and develop those emotions. It also helps to make the children understand the new ideas and attitudes in the world.
Most of the autism affected children find difficulties while understanding different senses. This therapy includes focusing the senses of the children. The children are put in a special designed room that helps the children to stimulate their all senses. During this therapy the specialist also works very close with the patient inside that room. Sensory integration therapy for autism follows the following four principles:
- The patient is trained to face the challenges through the play project
- The autism-affected child learns to use different tactics to solve the presented challenges
- The child is used to participate in various activities that create fun in his/her life
- The different thoughts and choices of the autism-affected children are used to perform therapeutic experiments
This surgery is basically performed on the assumption that the autism-affected people are over-stimulated or under-stimulated by the surroundings. Therefore, the therapy is focused on improving the sensory process in brain to make the patient's routine easy and developed.
This interdisciplinary and children-centered approach is designed for the emotional development of the autism-affected children. Both therapy specialist and child's parents work together to increase the development level of the child. They work on to use child's strengths in forming the new skills. Specialists prefer to employ this therapy in the routine of the child to make the development process more easy and natural.
However, all the above mentioned therapies are used to treat the autism-affected children, but still an effective and successful treatment needs to be invented. As of now, the present therapies are used to reduce the autism symptoms and the challenges in the learning process of the children.
