Art Therapy
• Because art therapy is complex, children can all have an individual plan that fits
what they need.
• One of the goals of art therapy with autism is to help the child communicate
• Case study on a boy named Tom, 12 years old who received art therapy for severe
sensory dysfunction and self-regulatory issues
• The firs 10 sessions lasted 30 min each. It took a few sessions to get Tom
familiarized with the art and to get him to actually start.
• After 6 months, Tom was sitting at the table for 30 min at a time with the whole
session lasting 1 hr.
• Tom’s communicative abilities had improved drastically. Not only was he able to
choose medium, color, and mode of application by grabbing the tools that he
wanted, he was also able to indicate when he wanted to end the session and go
home by humming his goodbye song and waving his hand. He had also learned to
say “no” to indicate rejection.
• It appears that art therapy helped him to engage in an activity that was pleasurable
to him
Play therapy
• Use of toys and paly to help children make sense of thoughts feelings and life
experiences
• Example: a little boy saw a hold up at a grocery store and his parents took him to
see a play therapist. At the first session he picked up two dolls and a dart gun and
repeatedly shot the dolls. Second session he did the same thing but instead of
doing that the whole time he played with other toys and periodically came back
and shot the dolls again. The third session he set up the dolls and got the dart gun
and then turned to the therapist and said he didn’t need these anymore because he
was doing a lot better. Play was something really helped him make sense of his
thoughts, feelings and life experiences. (YouTube video,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIdVJ_nG2as)
Family Therapy
• Structural family therapy looks at family relationships, behaviors, and patterns as
they are exhibited within the therapy session in order to evaluate the structure of
the family. Therapists also examine subsystems within the family structure, such
as parental or sibling subsystems. Structural family therapy was designed by
Salvador Minuchin, who would employ activities like role-playing in a therapy
session.
• Strategic family therapy examines family processes and functions, such as
communication or problem-solving patterns, by evaluating family behavior
outside the therapy session. Therapeutic techniques may include reframing or
redefining a problem scenario or using paradoxical interventions—those that
suggest the family take action that appears to be in opposition to their therapeutic
goals in order to create the desired change. Strategic family therapists believe that
change can occur rapidly, without intensive analysis of the source of the problem.
Prominent psychotherapists such as Jay Haley, Milton Erickson, and Cloe
Madanes helped develop strategic family therapy.
• Intergenerational family therapy acknowledges generational influences on family
and individual behavior. Identifying multigenerational behavioral patterns, such
as managing anxiety, can help people see that their current problems may be
rooted in previous generations. Murray Bowen designed this approach to family
therapy, and he used it in treatment for individuals and couples, as well as
families. Bowen employed techniques such as normalizing a family’s problems
by discussing similar scenarios in other families; describing the reactions of
individual family members, as opposed to acting them out; and encouraging
clients to respond with “I” statements, rather than blaming statements.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy
What are the components of DBT?
• DBT skills training group is focused on enhancing clients' capabilities by teaching
them behavioral skills. The group is run like a class where the group leader
teaches the skills and assigns homework for clients to practice using the skills in
their everyday lives. Groups meet on a weekly basis for approximately 2.5 hours
and it takes 24 weeks to get through the full skills curriculum, which is often
repeated to create a 1-year program.
• DBT individual therapy is focused on enhancing client motivation and helping clients
to apply the skills to specific challenges and events in their lives. In the standard
DBT model, individual therapy takes place once a week for as long as the client is
in therapy and runs concurrently with skills groups.
• DBT phone coaching is focused on providing clients with in-the-moment coaching on
how to use skills to effectively cope with difficult situations that arise in their
everyday lives. Clients can call their individual therapist between sessions to
receive coaching at the times when they need help the most.
• DBT therapist consultation team is intended to be therapy for the therapists and to
support DBT providers in their work with people who often have severe,
complex, difficult-to-treat disorders. The consultation team is designed to help
therapists stay motivated and competent so they can provide the best treatment
possible. Teams typically meet weekly and are composed of individual therapists
and group leaders who share responsibility for each client's care.
What does "dialectical" mean?
The term "dialectical" means a synthesis or integration of opposites. The primary
dialectic within DBT is between the seemingly opposite strategies of acceptance and
change. For example, DBT therapists accept clients as they are while also acknowledging
that they need to change in order to reach their goals. In addition, all of the skills and
strategies taught in DBT are balanced in terms of acceptance and change. For example,
the four skills modules include two sets of acceptance-oriented skills (mindfulness and
distress tolerance) and two sets of change-oriented skills (emotion regulation and
interpersonal effectiveness).