Clinical Outcomes of Behavioral Treatments for Pica in Children with Developmental Disabilities.
Day-treatment clinics can wipe out pica for kids with developmental disabilities using proven behavioral packages.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team worked with 11 kids who had developmental delays and kept eating non-food items.
They ran a day-treatment clinic five days a week.
Each child got a custom mix of DRO, NCR, and brief restraint when pica happened.
What they found
Every child showed big drops in pica.
Most kids cut the behavior by a large share or more within weeks.
Parents said the change lasted after clinic days ended.
How this fits with other research
Ganz et al. (2004) first showed that these same packages could work.
Boudreau et al. (2015) now proves the packages still work when scaled up to a full clinic.
Allan et al. (1994) used just three kids at home.
Boudreau et al. (2015) shows the same idea works for eleven kids in a clinic.
van der Miesen et al. (2024) looked at self-injury, not pica, but found home and clinic work the same.
This lines up with Boudreau et al. (2015) — clinic care is strong, yet home may be an option too.
Why it matters
You can tell parents that day-treatment clinics have solid data for pica.
If clinic slots are full, you can still try the same DRO-NCR package at home or school.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Pica is a potentially deadly form of self-injurious behavior most frequently exhibited by individuals with developmental and intellectual disabilities. Research indicates that pica can be decreased with behavioral interventions; however, the existing literature reflects treatment effects for small samples (n = 1-4) and the overall success of such treatments is not well-understood. This study quantified the overall effect size by examining treatment data from all patients seen for treatment of pica at an intensive day-treatment clinical setting (n = 11), irrespective of treatment success. Results demonstrate that behavioral interventions are highly effective treatments for pica, as determined by the large effect size for individual participants (i.e., NAP scores ≥ .70) and large overall treatment effect size (Cohen's d = 1.80).
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2015 · doi:10.1007/s10803-015-2375-z