Sensory Integration Therapy Research Articles

A large number of people, representing a variety of diagnostic categories exhibit self injurious behavior, including autism, childhood schizophrenia, intellectual disability, visual impairment, emotional disturbance, and learning disabilities. This chapter describes the analyses of different intervention methods for preventing self-injurious behavior and its devastating effects, such as primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention. Both prevalence studies and stimulus control studies of self-injurious behavior suggest that there are risk factors, which, if averted, would decrease the probability of onset of self-injurious behavior. The preventive techniques for averting self-injurious behavior or preventing its development would avoid much human suffering, and be much more cost-effective than current methods; however, the area of early identification and intervention with self-injurious behavior is in its infancy. With the help of the new genetics and advances in the neurobiology of self-injurious behavior, drugs can be prescribed much more effectively, with more specificity and fewer serious side effects than ever before. But, much work remains to be done to have better diagnostic instruments to guide the selection of psychotropic drugs for the appropriate complex disorder related to self-injurious behavior. The chapter also presents a variety of empirically supported, rational treatment procedures for self injurious behavior and also includes noncontingent restraint, sensory integration therapy, and multisensory environments. However, whether changing the context, in which behavior interventions occur, will be sufficient to decrease all self-injurious behavior remains to be seen.

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