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Therapy hours: how many are enough for autism spectrum disorder?

By Raising Children Network
 
 

Most therapies for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) need a certain number of hours a week to be effective. But there is more to therapy than hours spent with a therapist. Even approaches that use fewer hours of formal contact can be helpful.

How many hours of therapy are needed?

The most reliable studies suggest that children with ASD need anywhere between 15 and 40 hours of therapy each week. There isn’t a definitive answer to this question, however. Every child with ASD is different, so the number of hours that work well for one child might not work so well for another.

It’s about more than therapy sessions

Early, intensive and family-based therapies work best for children with ASD. These intensive therapies typically involve a certain amount of face-to-face contact with a therapist. But this contact is only part of a therapy’s ‘intensity’.

Intensity also involves time spent practising and using new skills in different situations, and with different people (at home, at child care, at school and so on).

Some approaches that use fewer hours of face-to-face contact with a therapist can be very effective. These include parent-led therapies such as More Than Words™ or the Denver Model. These therapies involve the child’s carers in learning skills so they can continue the therapy on a daily basis at home.

For example, a session with a therapist might focus on teaching a child to recognise colours. But the child will benefit just as much (or even more) if a parent helps the child to practise and use this skill as often as possible during everyday life. In other words, the time that parents spend with their child is a chance to reinforce formal learning.

Which therapies?

Recommendations about hours usually refer to behavioural and developmental interventions. Medical therapies, which usually involve taking drugs, don’t require any time except that needed to take the medication. Similarly, some alternative therapies, such as those that focus on children’s diet, don’t need a lot of time except for that involved in food preparation.

Read more about the different types of interventions for children with ASD.

Questions to ask about a therapy’s time requirement

  1. How many hours of face-to-face therapy or contact are recommended?
  2. Do we need to practise outside the face-to-face sessions? If so:
    • where (in what settings)?
    • who needs to be involved – parents, carers, teachers and so on?
    • when or how often (do we need to make time or should the therapy become part of daily life)?
    • how?

Research: what’s next?

More research is needed to make it easier for parents to understand how much time is needed for specific therapies.

In particular, we need to:

  • better understand how different therapies work (that is, a lot of one therapy might have the same benefit as just a little of another)
  • better compare the same therapies at different levels of intensity.
 
 
 
  • Last updated01-10-2009
  • Last reviewed01-10-2009
References

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