Objectives: The study aims to evaluate the efficacy of PEGASUS, a new group psychoeducational programme designed for children with ASD and their parents according to the principals of modified cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). PEGASUS comprises 6 weekly sessions, each lasting 1.5 hours with separate parallel sessions for children and for parents. PEGASUS aims to enable children to acquire a more balanced understanding of their unique strengths and difficulties and to enhance self-management strategies tailored to the child’s individual needs by means of personalised ‘toolkits’ and, by extension, improve family functioning.
Methods: 48 children (9-14 years) with diagnoses of High Functioning Autism or Asperger’s Syndrome and their parents are currently being recruited. These families will be randomly allocated to treatment or control groups. Treatment and control groups will be matched according to age, IQ, gender ratio and degree of autistic impairment. Those in the control group will receive ‘management as usual’. Measures of ASD knowledge, self-esteem, functional adaptation and family functioning will be taken at pre-treatment, post-treatment and at 3-month follow-up. Outcome measures will be collected by researchers blind to group allocation.
Results: The pilot study is currently underway involving 5 young children and their parents. Baseline data suggest 3 of the 5 parents were suffering significantly high levels of stress. Qualitatively, other clear themes emerging from parents are their desire and need for more support in explaining the ASD diagnosis to their children and feelings of isolation and helplessness. Groups for the RCT are due to start in January 2012 and pre-post data from three groups will be available for presentation at the conference.
Conclusions: PEGASUS is the first psychoeducational programme for children designed both to prevent negative attributions associated with the diagnosis of ASD, and to increase self-awareness and coping strategies. Furthermore, this is the first study to evaluate the efficacy of a psycho-educational programme around ASD diagnosis for children. This is a unique and potentially important study for evidence-based practise with children with an ASD diagnosis.
See more of: Treatments: A: Social Skills; School, Teachers
See more of: Prevalence, Risk factors & Intervention