I chose to review this book, because some of the authors are world-renowned authorities in the field of Autism Spectrum Disorder, with extensive research experience. Autism has been a hot topic, and new books come out every day. At the end of assessments, when children have been newly diagnosed, it has become the practice to recommend books for parents and teachers to learn more about the condition. Parents of children with High-Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder (HFASD) often ask about individual or group psychotherapy for their children, to try to help them make friends or deal with the stress of being different. This book answers the question: What is the state of the art at this time, concerning what CBT groups can achieve, to help this population? I would not list it as a recommended book on the closing stage of a diagnostic assessment.
The first sentence (page xi) of the Preface and Acknowledgments states: “The goal of this book is to provide scientists, practitioners, and students with a single-source overview of promising interventions that use a psychosocial approach to teach cognitive and behavioural skills to children and adolescents with HFASD”. This is precisely what this book succeeds in doing, and only this. It is not a book written for parents, or medical students, or people with high-functioning autism. It has at once, too much and too little information for any other group. It discusses assessment tools and interventions, but does not contain these assessment tools and manuals for the interventions. If a practitioner wants to start a cognitive-behavioural group for children or adolescents with HFASD, it is an extremely useful book, because it presents an overview of what CBT is, what HFASD is, how to adapt CBT for children and adolescents, what modifications are needed to adapt CBT for those with HFASD, and then it suggests programs that are evidence-based. But if you want to know how to teach your child to be more social, this is not the book for you. Step-by-step instructions are not provided.
The first two chapters of Part I are wonderful. The first is a history and description of CBT, including modifications needed for children. The second is a chapter about modifications of CBT for children and adolescents with HFASD. If the book stopped here, I would recommend it for people who work with children and adolescents with HFASD, because in describing how to adapt CBT for HFASD children, it provides a clear and concise, accurate description of the thinking styles, the sensory challenges, etc., of children and adolescents with HFASD.
After this, the book is for a more specialized audience. The third chapter of Part I, about the role of assessment in guiding treatment, is a reference of which tests are available to determine different capacities, an evaluation of these tests, and why this testing should be done. Parts 2, 3, and 4 are similarly specialized. They concern, respectively, anxiety and behaviour problems, social competence, and sexuality and affection. Each section discusses one or several manuals to lead individual, family or group sessions concerning different aspects of these areas of concern. The manuals are not included, but they are summarized, and research to date on the manuals are presented. Since different chapters have different authors, and each author typically is describing manuals they have written or worked with, there is repetition, for example, in describing how to modify programs for the HFASD population. There is a difference in the amount of detail in each chapter. Sometimes a manual is described in depth by summarizing each session, which I preferred, and sometimes a lot less information about the actual sessions is provided. If I want to start a group, say, for CBT for stress and anger management in young children with HFASD, I could read all about the Exploring Feelings Intervention: the history, how it was adapted, an overview of the sessions, the research to date, and future directions. However without a copy of the manual included in the chapter, the description of sessions is too vague to know what to say without the manual. I am also not certain that there is not a better program in existence, because the chapter does not compare the manual presented with other programs that may have the same goal. Perhaps the manuals and tests presented in this book are the state of the art. The research foundation behind them is exhaustively presented.
A problem in the area of Autism treatment is that programs and products are marketed with little or no research behind them. Some of the programs described in this book are not that successful in achieving their goals, and often results are mixed, but it is doubtful that there are much better programs out there with the research to prove it, because I suspect if there were, they would have been included in this book.
The last chapter is a nice summary and overview of the book, and can appeal to a less specialized audience.
In conclusion, I recommend this book for those who plan to run groups for children and adolescents with HFASD, either as part of a clinical or a research program.