Correlates of Quality of Life in Autistic Individuals.

Background: Quality of life is an important outcome to autistic individuals. However, the correlates of quality of life in this population are not well known. The purpose of this project was to investigate the extent to which employment, depression, anxiety, and social participation were associated with quality of life in autistic individuals.

Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment Plus (SBIRT-Plus): A Novel Interprofessional Training for Rehabilitation Science Professional Students.

Importance: With the increasing amount of substance use-related health conditions in the United States, it is important for rehabilitation science professionals to receive screening and prevention training.

Objective: To describe and examine the preliminary effectiveness of a novel educational program, Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment Plus (SBIRT-Plus), that combines traditional SBIRT training with new modules for cannabis, stimulant, and opioid use.

Design: Prospective, cohort design.

Helping Practitioners Stop, Drop, and Roll: Suggestions to Help Improve Responses to Intense Clinical Events.

Community practitioners inconsistently implement evidence-based interventions. Implementation science emphasizes the importance of some practitioner characteristics, such as motivation, but factors such as practitioners' emotion regulation and cognitive processing receive less attention. Practitioners often operate in stressful environments that differ from those in which they received training.

Developing a Measure of Key Adult Outcomes in Adults with Developmental Disabilities: Conceptual Model and Item Generation of the REALS (Relationships, Employment, Autonomy, and Life Satisfaction).

Employment, social relationships, and autonomy are priorities to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDDs). However, few validated measures exist to systematically assess these key adult outcomes in this population. This research includes first steps to develop self- and proxy report measures of life outcomes for adults with IDDs-the Relationships, Employment, Autonomy, and Life Satisfaction (REALS).

Item Understanding of Common Quality of Life Measures for use with Autistic Adults.

Quality of life (QOL) and life satisfaction are important research priorities for autistic adults. As such, we saw a need to evaluate individual items of commonly used subjective QOL scales to understand how they are interpreted and perceived by autistic adults. This study used cognitive interviews and repeated sampling to evaluate the accessibility, test-retest reliability and internal consistency of several common QOL measures in a sample of young autistic adults (n = 20; aged 19-32).

Stakeholder informed development of the Emotion Awareness and Skills Enhancement team-based program (EASE-Teams).

Emotion dysregulation (ED) impacts mental health symptoms and well-being in autistic individuals. In prior work, we developed the Emotion Awareness and Skills Enhancement (EASE) to improve emotion dysregulation with autistic adolescents (aged 12-17). The study team partnered with autistic individuals, their caregivers, and expert clinicians to adapt EASE for autistic adolescents and adults with co-occurring intellectual disability and autistic elementary-aged children, groups that often benefit from caregiver support in treatment.

Assessment and Treatment of Emotion Regulation Impairment in Autism Spectrum Disorder Across the Life Span: Current State of the Science and Future Directions.

Emotion regulation (ER) is the ability to modify arousal and emotional reactivity to achieve goals and maintain adaptive behaviors. ER impairment in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is thought to underlie many problem behaviors, co-occurring psychiatric symptoms, and social impairment, and yet is largely unaddressed both clinically and in research. There is a critical need to develop ER treatment and assessment options for individuals with ASD across the life span, given the multitude of downstream effects on functioning.

Mindfulness "Here and Now": Strategies for Helping Adolescents With Autism.

Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) are increasingly popular and have a growing empirical basis of support for improving physical and mental health, general functioning, and quality of life. MBIs are an especially attractive approach to improve emotion regulation (ER) in adolescents who have autism spectrum disorder (ASD), as they are thought to directly target ER and can be tailored to individual needs, symptoms, and cognitive capacity. Despite growing interest in MBIs for adolescents with ASD, there are few clinical delivery resources to support clinicians untrained in the use of mindfulness within therapy.

Assessment and Treatment of Emotion Regulation Impairment in Autism Spectrum Disorder Across the Life Span: Current State of the Science and Future Directions.

Emotion regulation (ER) is the ability to modify arousal and emotional reactivity to achieve goals and maintain adaptive behaviors. ER impairment in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is thought to underlie many problem behaviors, co-occurring psychiatric symptoms, and social impairment, and yet is largely unaddressed both clinically and in research. There is a critical need to develop ER treatment and assessment options for individuals with ASD across the life span, given the multitude of downstream effects on functioning.

Improving emotion regulation ability in autism: The Emotional Awareness and Skills Enhancement (EASE) program.

Emotion regulation impairments are common among individuals with autism spectrum disorder and are believed to often underlie commonly seen problems with aggression, depression, and anxiety. The Emotional Awareness and Skills Enhancement program was developed to reduce emotion regulation impairment and thereby improve behavioral disturbance, via mindfulness. Emotional Awareness and Skills Enhancement consists of a 16-week individual therapy treatment targeting emotion regulation impairments among individuals with autism spectrum disorder.

Psychosocial Treatments Targeting Anxiety and Depression in Adolescents and Adults on the Autism Spectrum: Review of the Latest Research and Recommended Future Directions.

Purpose Of Review: This synthesis of treatment research related to anxiety and depression in adolescents and adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) focuses on the scientific support for various forms of psychosocial interventions, useful adaptations to standard interventions, and engagement of candidate therapeutic mechanisms.

Recent Findings: There is considerable evidence for the efficacy of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) to treat co-occurring problems with anxiety, but there has been relatively little research on treatment of co-occurring depression. Multiple mechanisms of treatment effect have been proposed, but there has been little demonstration of target engagement via experimental therapeutics.

People can change: Measuring individual variability in rehabilitation science.

Purpose/objective: The purpose of this report is to provide rehabilitation researchers with an explanation of multilevel item response theory (MLIRT), specifically applied to data collected using ecological momentary assessment (EMA) methods.

Design: This is a didactic brief report of a statistical method. The advantages of the method are illustrated using examples from the literature or clinical experience, and potential implications for rehabilitation science are highlighted.

Hierarchical Linear Modeling for Analysis of Ecological Momentary Assessment Data in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Research.

Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) methods collect real-time data in real-world environments, which allow physical medicine and rehabilitation researchers to examine objective outcome data and reduces bias from retrospective recall. The statistical analysis of EMA data is directly related to the research question and the temporal design of the study. Hierarchical linear modeling, which accounts for multiple observations from the same participant, is a particularly useful approach to analyzing EMA data.

Using virtual reality to explore self-regulation in high-risk settings.

Virtual reality (VR) models allow investigators to explore high-risk situations carefully in the laboratory using physiological assessment strategies and controlled conditions not available in field settings. This article introduces the use of a virtual experience to examine the influence of self-regulatory skills training on female participants' reactions to a high-risk encounter with an aggressive male. Sixty-three female participants were recruited for the study.