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Autism Spectrum Disorder: When There is no Cure, There are Countless of Treatments

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Abstract

We investigated parent reports of use of special education and support services, use of evidence-based practices (EBPs), use of past and current complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) treatments, non-use of CAM treatments, willingness, and unwillingness to use CAM treatments, reasons for use and non-use of CAM treatments, and perceptions of EBPs and CAM treatments in their children’s functioning. We collected data from a total of 166 parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) through a web-based survey. 94% of the parents reported lifetime use of at least one CAM treatment. Parents weighed on a wide variety of factors in decision-making. CAM treatments use was positively associated with parental educational level, length of time since ASD diagnosis, and child’s ASD severity.

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Acknowledgements

We wish to gratefully acknowledge assistance provided by Avsar Ardic and Muharrem Koc. We are also grateful to all the respondents who participated in the study.

Funding

No funding was received for conducting this study.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Dincer Saral, Hacettepe University, Beytepe Campus, Special Education Department, Ankara, Turkey, 06800. Electronic mail may be sent to [dincersaral@hacettepe.edu.tr].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Special Education, Hacettepe University, 06800, Ankara, Turkey

    Dincer Saral & Seray Olcay

  2. Department of Special Education, Anadolu University, 26000, Eskisehir, Turkey

    Halil Ozturk

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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation and analyses were performed by Dincer Saral and Seray Olcay. Data collection was performed by all authors. The first draft of the manuscript was written by all authors and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Approval was obtained from the ethics committee of Hacettepe University (Ethics approval number: 2020/20–40). All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/ or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Saral, D., Olcay, S. & Ozturk, H. Autism Spectrum Disorder: When There is no Cure, There are Countless of Treatments. J Autism Dev Disord 53, 4901–4916 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-022-05745-2

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