Childhood autism : a comparison of pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions in symptom management.

Abstract

Childhood Autism: A comparison of pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions in symptom management. The purpose of this study was to conduct a critical review of the literature on evidence - based treatment (therapies) for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and to provide recommendations for research and clinical practice. This study will answer the research question: Are pharmacological interventions more effective than non-pharmacological approaches in aiding children with autism in social skills and communication outcomes? The research question was formulated upon the PICO framework. Population for this literature review includes children between the ages of 1 and 17. The interventions from the articles collated will analyze pharmacological treatments (naltrexone and secretin) and non-pharmacological therapies (CBT, technology interventions, PECS and animal therapy), which will examine social and communicative outcomes. Inclusion and exclusion criteria such as age, diagnosis, outcome, and publication dates of the articles were taken into consideration. A literature search was conducted in Cinahl, Psychlnfo, Academic Search Complete, Google Scholar, PubMed and ScienceDirect, and a total of eight articles were collected. The evidence from the literature was ranked according to the hierarchy of evidence cited by Melnyk (2011). Method of appraisal was carried out by means of the CASP tool. A critical analysis of the literature revealed that the administration of secretin was not effective in improving social skills and communication. Naltrexone showed mild improvement in social communicative functioning and all the non-pharmacological approaches included in the study resulted in improved social skills and communication outcomes. All these approaches except pet therapy were derived from high level evidence (RCT"s) and consequently are of value in influencing evidence based practice. Therefore their implementation will be an asset to the child. Further literature which combines pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions is recommended. Key Words Used: MEDICATION, AUTISM, CHILDREN, THERAPY, TECHNOLOGY, TREATMENT