The Autism Society Event and Education Recordings Archive

Many bright individuals with ASD face difficulties in living personally meaningful lives. With its overarching goal of increasing psychological flexibility, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy has great potential with clients with ASD. Using compelling case examples, this experiential session will describe the treatment and illustrate effective techniques for achieving life changes. Many bright individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) experience emotional difficulties and face significant impediments to living personally meaningful and successful lives. In fact, the rate of anxiety and depression in adults with ASD is high (Joshi et al., 2013). Practitioners who work with individuals on the spectrum are challenged by the limited research on psychotherapy models for clients with ASD (Bishop-Fitzpartrick et al., 2013).

Though a growing body of research demonstrates that adapted cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can be effective in treating adults with comorbid conditions such as depression, anxiety, and OCD (Gaus, 2011; Russell et al., 2013; Weiss & Lunsky, 2010), there are some limitations to the use of CBT with adults with ASD (e.g., limited long-term maintenance of restructuring thoughts).

A novel treatment for individuals with ASD that has an emerging evidence-base, and is clinically sound and well-suited with regards to its overall goals and targeted processes is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and associated mindfulness-based practices. In ACT, a client’s ongoing accomplishment is to be living / making steps towards engaging in a personally meaningful life. Through increasing psychological flexibility, which occurs via acceptance and mindfulness skills and behavior change, clients learn to cope with difficult thoughts and feelings, identify values, and engage in committed action that leads in the direction of what is important to them in life (Hayes et al., 2006). In contrast to CBT, the focus in ACT lies in the acceptance of thoughts and feelings without the need to change them. Learning to accept and cope with these experiences might reduce ruminative thinking and negative mood and increase a range of other coping skills (Kabat-Zinn, 1982). ACT is considered to be an emerging evidence-based practice in treating of a wide range of psychiatric concerns in the general population that often co-occur with ASD, including anxiety and depression (Swain et al., 2013). With individuals with ASD, a few studies have been published demonstrating preliminary positive results for ACT and mindfulness in treating both adolescents and adults (Kiep et al., 2014; Pahnke et al., 2014) including a randomized control trial targeting anxiety and rumination (Spek et al., 2013). A recently published book, ACT for Children with Autism and Emotional Challenges, outlines a treatment protocol and exercises for using ACT with youth with ASD (Dixon, 2014).    

With its overarching goal of increasing psychological flexibility, and a focus on valued living, ACT has great potential for adults with ASD. Using compelling case examples that highlight progress and struggles, this experiential workshop will describe and demonstrate the treatment, discuss adaptations for the ASD population, and will illustrate effective techniques for achieving positive life changes.      

Workshop participants will be able to a) identify the overarching goal of ACT and the six interconnected components of treatment, b) list challenges associated with ASD that are targeted as part of ACT, and c) describe three clinical techniques that can be used to increase meaningful life actions in adults on the spectrum.

Learning Objectives: