Description
Autism has been gaining more attention in both scientific and popular literature. Recent research suggests that autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are increasing in prevalence (from 1 in 150 in 2000 to 1 in 88 in 2012) and that ASDs occur in all racial and ethnic minority groups. Despite this, there is increasing evidence of health and educational disparities that affect diagnosis and access to interventions. A multicultural framework (El-Ghoroury & Krackow, 2012) suggests strategies for helping to reduce some of these disparities through careful history and assessment. The high prevalence rate suggests that child providers will likely encounter children with ASDs in their practice. This presentation will discuss how psychologists can treat children with ASDs in outpatient settings (El-Ghoroury & Krackow, 2011). Finally, the session will review and discuss the new proposed changes to the DSM-V regarding ASDs.
Learning Objectives. Participants will be able to:
- Identify health and educational disparities that are affecting various groups of children due to factors such as socioeconomic status or race/ethnicity.
- Review a multicultural framework for the assessment of autism spectrum disorders.
- Review how the adjunct problems facing children with autism spectrum disorders can be treated in outpatient psychotherapy settings.
- Identify changes to autism spectrum disorder diagnosis in DSM V.
About Nabil Hassan El-Ghoroury, Ph.D.
Nabil Hassan El-Ghoroury, Ph.D., is currently the Associate Executive Director of the American Psychological Association of Graduate Students. He has over 20 years of experience working with children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs).
Professionally, he began working with children with autism while an undergraduate at UCLA, where he spent 2 years in the Clinic for the Behavioral Treatment of Children, organized by Dr. Ivar Lovaas. There, he served as a therapist and senior therapist on several cases, and conducted a study on language development in three children with autism.
He earned his Ph.D. at SUNY Binghamton, where his masters thesis on the play behaviors of family members towards children with autism was published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, and awarded the Student Research Award from the Autism Special Interest Group of the Association for the Advancement of Behavior Therapy.
Dr. El-Ghoroury completed a postdoc at the University of Rochester’s Autism Spectrum Disorders Program, where he worked as a behavioral consultant for a number of school districts helping train staff about working with children with ASDs.
From 2002 to 2009, he worked at MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland, OH, where he completed assessments and treated children with ASDs, including children from Spanish speaking families. By the time he left MetroHealth, he was conducting comprehensive testing of children suspected of ASDs in Spanish.
Since 2009, he has published two papers on working with children with ASDs based on the work he did in Cleveland.