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Together with the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center and ACM Lifting Lives, SENSE Theatre recently presented a two-night performance Circus del Sé. Written by Blythe Corbett, PhD, James G. Blakemore Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and director of the SENSE Lab, the play about a young boy with aspirations of joining the circus featured 12 typically developing peer students and actors and 12 children with autism. Through theatrical games and role play, they entertained the crowd and, according to a study published the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, sharpened their social skills in measurable, meaningful ways. One in 36 children in the United States have autism spectrum disorder, a neurodevelopmental condition that effects cognitive function, communication and social skills. "The purpose of the study was to see if SENSE Theatre, a unique social skills program that includes trained typically developing peers, theatrical techniques and active performance of a play, can enhance social competence in youth 10 to 16 years of age with autism spectrum disorder," said Corbett, who was the principal investigator. The final sample in the study involved 207 autistic youth from Vanderbilt University Medical Center, University of Alabama and Stonybrook University who were randomized to SENSE Theatre® or Tackling Teenage Together, an active control treatment condition. "The findings show that the interactive theatrical intervention enhances social salience for relevant social information, such as faces, and this increased social interest results in greater motivation to engage with others," Corbett said. "As clinicians, it is important to consider novel ways to treat social skills beyond individual and group didactic approaches. Moreover, it is valuable to develop and study innovative ways to provide treatment for our patients that may otherwise be overlooked."

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"My ASD son continues to be bullied at school, but nobody there seems to take it seriously. His teach said that 'he seems to start the arguments by annoying some of the other students.' O.K. Fine. Maybe this is true, but that doesn't justify bullying. How can I get the school to take this seriously?". P.S. Warning to parents: According to statistics, it is very likely that YOUR child with ASD HAS BEEN or IS BEING bullied. You need to investigate this now - BEFORE your child has been tormented for weeks or months or years! If after your investigation, you discover there has been no bullying against your child, then thank God for it. We changed schools to one that has zero tolerance for bullying and our son is in the playground without supervision and doesn't hit anymore, he is happy and wanting to go to school, stomach up sets are no longer and it was affecting him mentally and physically. The child with autism that is being bullied is being blamed for starting it by annoying others. Not only have there always been the bullying kids, there have been bullying adults who must interact him. Anonymous said... Putting it blunty,the little bastards who make these poor kids life a living hell,usually have 1 or maybe 2 big bastard bullies at home learning them there greedy bombastic bullying ways.

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Approximately 20% of people identify as neurodivergent, representing one-fifth of the entire world's population. Given this, it's shocking that most professional environments don't put more effort into accommodating neurodivergent people, whose abilities can contribute in significant ways to the company's success. Unemployment rates among neurodivergent adults are alarmingly high, ranging from 30 to 40%, a rate three times greater than that of individuals with physical disabilities and eight times higher than those without disabilities. As if we needed more proof that workplaces across the globe are simply engaged in diversity theater, a recent study discovered that 50% of leaders and managers express discomfort with hiring individuals who are neurodivergent. Neurodivergent individuals possess unique talents, perspectives, and problem-solving abilities that can give organizations a competitive advantage. Leaving these skills untapped does a huge disservice to neurodivergent individuals and employers who are constantly exhorting employees to think outside the box. Supporting neurodiverse employees Many resources exist on how employers can support neurodiverse team members, but as someone who only recently discovered that I am neurodivergent, the most effective way I've found to overcome my dyslexia-related challenges has been to talk about it with my colleagues.

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How do we ensure that the lives of children with autistic traits are not harmed by rejection? We know that young children with autistic traits are more likely to experience rejection and non-acceptance, even when the traits are at a low level. Our study identified a particularly vulnerable group of young children with autistic traits: those who are also aggressive and disruptive. Children with autistic traits who also have behavioral problems need the most support with their peer relationships. Some programs focus on reducing children's behavior problems, especially when the problems are above and beyond the autistic traits that most convincingly predicted poor relationships in our study. In many cases, children with autistic traits can and do have friendships and experience acceptance. Our findings suggest many opportunities for improving the relationships of children with autistic traits.

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A 13-year-old boy with Autism has been forced to live at UCHealth Longs Peak Hospital in Longmont for three weeks after his dad abandoned him and human service workers told hospital employees it would take months to secure placement for the boy due to a lack of resources. A hospital employee emailed State Representative Judy Amabile of Boulder last week asking her to intervene. The employee said Boulder County Human Service workers initially agreed to take custody of the boy and then refused saying he was safe in an emergency department. Amabile says state and county human service workers told her they are working on finding placement for the boy but she says it is unconscionable that he has been forced to live in a hospital for nearly a month, "I don't know whether the dad may or may not have reached out and ask for help but may not been able to get any help. Like we just... we don't know, but what we do know is that you can't just leave a 13-year-old in an ER for weeks on end with no end in sight." She says she also reached out to both Boulder County and State Human Service workers but they would only say that they were working on it. Madlynn Ruble with the Colorado Department of Human Services said while the state is working to increase residential treatment, it lacks options for children with highly complex medical and behavioral health needs, due in part to a lack of providers. "Every month there are children and youth who are either living in residential settings out of state, sleeping in county offices or hotels overnight, or staying in hospital or detention settings past when it is appropriate for them to be there," she said.

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"That led me to start reading a lot about the gut microbiome, the autonomic nervous system, and their connection with the brain and mental health," she says. Today, Holingue has joined the ranks of scientists seeking to understand the interplay between the brain and the gut microbiome - that is the vast array of organisms, including bacteria, fungi and viruses, that thrive in the human gut. It's clear there's a physiological connection between brain and gut, says Dr. Glenn Treisman, a professor of medicine and psychiatry at Johns Hopkins. For Holingue, the connection between the gut and mental health is both scientific and personal. Ultimately we may be able to understand how the composition of the gut microbiome or metabolites that are produced by the gut microbiome helps cause mental illness or neurodevelopmental conditions, or the ways those conditions manifest in different people. We're wrapping up a study at Kennedy Krieger Institute and Johns Hopkins where we're collecting physical health data, behavioral health data and gut microbiome data from a relatively small sample of autistic boys and girls, and trying to see if we find patterns between the types of microbes in their stool and what kind of co-occurring symptoms they have, like GI symptoms, sensory sensitivities, anxiety, and so on. Have you used your understanding of the gut microbiome and mental health connection to help with your own mental and digestive health?

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Now, in her second year at UVM, Loftness is refining another engineered health tool to identify other adverse conditions that often go undetected: anxiety and depression in young children. Young children may not have the vocabulary or ability to communicate problems to caregivers who might be able to help. That's the idea behind Loftness's project, "Discovering Digital Phenotypes of Childhood Internalizing Disorders for Point-of-Care Diagnostics." Her work builds on that of her faculty mentors at UVM, Ryan McGinnis, Karl and Mary Fessenden Professor of Biomedical Engineering, and Ellen McGinnis, assistant professor of psychiatry, to identify the biomarkers associated with internalizing orders in young children. During a therapy session with a five-year-old McGinnis suspected was depressed, she learned there were no existing tools to identify anxiety disorders in young kids. The field of psychology has generally not examined the mental health of young children. It hasn't really considered anxiety and depression something that young children experience, McGinnis explains. Perhaps flagging children earlier will help drive cases down by giving caregivers of children the information to them develop lifelong coping skills.

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To see your personal experience reflected back to you in clear cut language can be empowering, because if there is a term for what you experience, then a conclusion can be made that you are not strange, which is how it can feel sometimes. The sound of perfect harmonies makes me feel like I'm being massaged in my head. I can feel tubas in my stomach. If someone raised their voice in anger, I could feel it physically. Within a couple years, I began studying with a sound healer and I started to understand the tremendous impact sound has on each of us. Using the word "Feel" to describe a sound was strange to them. I'm sharing this now because I feel as if I live in a world rife with misunderstanding and miscommunication. If you are someone who is sensitive to sound, you might seriously consider sound healing as a daily management tool as well as a healing modality the next time you're feeling unwell.

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Judy Singer is several thousand miles from her Australian home, on a two-week trip around the UK, which includes an onstage interview at Cambridge University and her receipt of an honorary fellowship from Birkbeck, University of London. The neurodiversity movement is a political movement for people who want their human rights. To some extent, what people were discussing online was centred on their own psychologies, but it was also about wider society: the ways that its organisations, institutions and attitudes made many people's lives all but impossible, and how those things could be changed. In the meantime, Singer had decided to write a thesis focused on the online communities she was now part of, and her sense that they were cohering into a new social movement, comparable to those focused on feminism and gay rights. One of the writers involved was Steve Silberman, who contributed a piece titled Neurodiversity Rewires Conventional Thinking About Brains, which began by crediting Singer with the idea's invention. "They said, 'Did you know you've just been cited in Wired magazine?' I thought, 'Oh wow.' Then I contacted Steve, and said, 'That's me.' He said, 'I've been looking for you.' And that was that." Silberman has since paid tribute to Singer by not only telling her story in Neurotribes - which was a bestseller - but paying glowing tribute to her work: "Few can claim to have coined a term that changed the world for the better. Judy Singer can." Singer then watched as neurodiversity began to snowball, including in Australia.

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A child whose parent suffers from anxiety is more likely to develop the disorder, and studies show that genetic changes from experiencing trauma can be passed down to children or grandchildren. While you may dread small talk and happy hours, you probably don't want your child to feel the same way about playdates and parties. This may limit social opportunities for the child, putting them at a disadvantage in terms of building social skills, and potentially passing down social insecurity. Somich says you can enlist the help of a trusted adult to provide your children with healthy exposure to social situations: "This way your child can see that it is possible to feel comfortable and regulated in social environments. You can talk through your fears with your child by saying, "I am feeling anxious right now because I'm not used to flying. If you see your child modeling your own fears, anxieties, and neuroses, Turner says it is never too early to seek professional help. "Just because a parent may struggle with some fears does not automatically mean the child will develop similar fears," Turner says.

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