Outcome of Home-Based Early Intervention for Autism in Sri Lanka: Follow-Up of a Cohort and Comparison with a Nonintervention Group

Abstract

This paper presents the outcome of a home-based autism intervention program (HBAIP) in 18- to 40-month-old children newly diagnosed and treatment naïve. Intervention was exclusively implemented at home. Outcome was measured at 3 months and 6 months after intervention and compared with a group of newly diagnosed children with autism who were >40 months at intake but had not received any autism specific clinical management. Aim was also to estimate whether natural development would contribute to gain in skills and compare with the effect of intervention. Five selected parameters of behavior representing social interaction and social communication were used to assess outcome. Results showed a statistically significant improvement between preintervention and postintervention in all the measured parameters. The effect size was large when compared to preintervention and gains were indicated by changes in mean scores and p values within a narrow confidence interval. Highest gains were in first 3 months of postintervention which continued up to 6 months. Although the comparison group was more advanced in the measured skills at intake, they were significantly below the level reached by experimental group at 3 months and 6 months after intervention. This study was registered in the Sri Lanka Clinical Trials Registry (SLCTR/2009/011).

Burden of major depressive disorder and quality of life among mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder in urban bangladesh

“…Parent based education program helps caregivers to interact and communicate with their children with ASD and promote the development of their children's communication and behavioral skills, parent-child interaction, as well as parent well-being [Beaudoin, Sébire, & Couture, 2014]. Recent studies in China and Sri Lanka suggest that home-based parental training programs through play activity, as well as music therapy, can improve child-related outcomes such as communication, daily living skills, eye contact, and social reciprocity [Liao et al, 2014;Perera, Jeewandara, Seneviratne, & Guruge, 2016;Yang, 2016].…”

“…Maternal mental health supports in ASD care and QoL. Studies conducted in both the high resource and LMIC settings have reported that parents who participated in any training interventions for their children with ASD consistently report a high degree of satisfaction and improvement in their children [Patterson & Smith, 2011;Perera et al, 2016;Rahman et al, 2016]. However, higher socioeconomic status of mothers and improvement in children after schooling were important contributory factors for the improvement of the QoL of mothers in our study, suggesting affordability of the families to offer ASD care through school services may influence QoL of mothers of children with ASD, and more representative studies will be needed to further parse such a relationship.…”

Exclusion Criteria Used in Early Behavioral Intervention Studies for Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…Perera, Jeewandara, Seneviratne, and Guruge [28] investigated an early-intervention program for children aged 18 to 40 mon in Sri Lanka. Study participants were children who had just received an initial diagnosis of Autism, were 18 to 40 mon in age, and had never received behavioral or developmental intervention previously.…”

Benefícios no uso de intervenção precoce em crianças com transtorno do espectro autista (TEA): uma revisão integrativa

“…Destacou-se sobre a eficácia e viabilidade das intervenções precoce em crianças com TEA, e a importância do uso de intervenção desde o início dos sinais de alerta (D'Elia et al 2014;Howard et al 2014;Kasari et al 2015;Kitzerow, et al 2019;Perera et al 2016;Rogers et al 2014;Yatawara et al 2016). O uso de tecnologia combinada a intervenções precoce, que representa uma ferramenta de grande utilidade no tratamento de crianças com TEA, sendo utilizadas tanto pelos pais como pelos profissionais (Moore et al 2015;Whitehouse et al 2017).…”

“…O transtorno do espectro autista provoca grandes déficits comunicativos e afetivos, em decorrência de tais problemas a maioria das intervenções precoces são voltadas para o desenvolvimento e melhoria de tais habilidades (Mottron, 2017;Perera et al, 2016). Dentre as intervenções precoces mais utilizadas atualmente destaca-se as intervenções comportamentais e naturalista que tem como foco a intensidade e a precocidade da intervenção (Kasari et al, 2015;Kitzerow et al, 2019;Howard et al, 2014;Mottron, 2017).…”