UCLA

Background: Many psychotherapy interventions exist for autistic youth and previous meta-analyses in this field have typically focused on specific settings or intervention types. In order to provide more individualized support, it is imperative to learn more about the effectiveness of the different types of psychotherapy on the clinical areas of need common in autistic youth (Wood et al., 2015).Methods: Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of psychotherapy for autistic youth were included in the meta-analysis. Study inclusion criteria include (a) published in English and include random assignment to treatment or control group, (b) require a previous diagnosis of autism for all participants, (c) a mean age of 6 to 17 years, and (d) provide outcome measure data from both the intervention and control groups. PyschINFO, PubMed, and ERIC were used to locate all psychotherapy RCTs for autistic youth using keywords including autis*, asperger*, autism spectrum disorder, intervention, therapy, psychotherapy, and treatment, in all combinations. An established codebook from Weisz et al. (2017) was adapted for the present study. Results: A total of 133 measures were coded across 29 studies and included 1,464 participants with a mean age of 10.39 years (1.89). One primary coder independently coded all studies and intercoder agreement (89%) was calculated for 10% of the included studies. A small mean effect size (.38; 95% CI [0.26, 0.47]) was found for psychotherapy for autistic youth, with cognitive behavioral therapy as the most common type of psychotherapy (21 studies), a small group of heterogenous behaviorally-informed therapies (3 studies), and a grouping of other interventions that were not related (5 studies). A similarly small effect was found for both BITs (0.49; 95% CI [0.11, 0.73]) and CBT (0.42; 95% CI [0.26, 0.53]), while other interventions (0.25; 95% CI [0.07, 0.47]) also produced a small effect for autistic youth. Conclusions: The present study provides a quantitative analysis of psychotherapy RCTs for autistic youth. While the small mean effect size shows the significant impact of psychotherapy interventions for autistic youth, additional research is needed to further assess the details of the most effective psychotherapies for each of the areas of clinical need.