Monthly Webinar
AIR-P Presents: Mindfulness: A Promising Therapeutic Approach for Autistic People
Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) are increasingly popular and are emerging as an empirically supported practice for autistic people. Mindfulness-based interventions are thought to directly target emotion regulation and self-compassion, and can be tailored to sensory needs, cognitive needs, and communication preferences.
Despite growing interest in mindfulness for autistic people, there are few clinical delivery resources to support providers untrained in the use of mindfulness with autistic clients. This session will provide an overview of mindfulness approaches for autistic people with and without intellectual disability, including the Emotion Awareness and Skills Enhancement (EASE) program (Conner et al., 2019; Beck et al., 2020). The session will conclude with common challenges and solutions for providers intending to use mindfulness with autistic people (Beck et al., 2020).
Topics Will Include:
- Understanding key principles of mindfulness interventions and mechanisms of change
- Identifying evidence-based mindfulness interventions for autistic people with and without intellectual disability.
- Recall suggestions for utilizing mindfulness practices with autistic people with and without intellectual disability.
About our presenter:
Dr. Kelly Beck, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh. She is a Licensed Professional Counselor with a longstanding interest in using mindfulness-based interventions with a variety of disability populations. She is a qualified Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) teacher and has over 10 years of experience teaching mindfulness groups for people with and without disabilities. Beck is the co-developer of the Emotion Awareness and Skills Enhancement (EASE) program, an evidence-based mindfulness intervention designed to improve emotion regulation among autistic teens and young adults with and without intellectual disability. Dr. Beck’s specialty is using community-based participatory research methods to design and test programs that improve the mental health of autistic and neurodivergent people. Her work also focuses on sharing this research with community-based organizations and service providers.
View our most recent webinar below!
Webinar Title: AIR-P Presents: What do Adults with Autism and Other Neurodevelopmental Disorders Value in Adult Neurodevelopmental Care?
Presented on: October 15, 2024
Webinar Description:
There are few specialists that serve adults with Neurodevelopmental Disabilities (NDD), and most adults with NDD receive care from providers without specialty training in NDD. Care for this population is highly variable, and patient and caregiver priorities in this age group are not well known. We aimed to explore individual and caregiver values around adult neurodevelopmental care. In this qualitative study, we conducted 22 semi-structured virtual interviews from September 2021 to February 2022 with randomly selected adults with NDD and/or their caregivers. The need for adult neurodevelopmental care is growing as more individuals with NDD are living into adulthood. Better understanding of patient and caregiver values can help shape this emerging field to meet the needs of this unique, often overlooked and underserved, population.