Training of child and adolescent psychiatry fellows in autism and intellectual disability.
Child psychiatry fellows get almost no autism or ID training, so BCBAs can step in and teach.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Marrus et al. (2014) sent a short survey to every child psychiatry fellowship director in the United States.
They asked how many hours fellows spend learning about autism and intellectual disability.
They also asked how many patients with these diagnoses the fellows actually see.
What they found
Fellows get only 3–4 hours of autism or ID lectures each year.
Most fellows see fewer than five patients with autism or ID during training.
Almost half of the directors said they need more training resources.
How this fits with other research
Nickerson et al. (2015) looked at low-resource countries and found the same problem: not enough trained people to spot autism.
McCauley et al. (2018) and Libero et al. (2016) show that kids with autism plus ID have lower quality of life, especially in making friends and feeling included.
Lee et al. (2008) adds that parents of these kids report high stress.
Together, these studies say the same thing: there are not enough trained clinicians, and families are struggling.
Why it matters
You can help close this gap. Offer to give a guest lecture at the nearest child psychiatry program. Bring a case study and a simple data sheet. One hour from you can double their autism training time.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Patients with autism spectrum disorders and intellectual disability can be clinically complex and often have limited access to psychiatric care. Because little is known about post-graduate clinical education in autism spectrum disorder and intellectual disability, we surveyed training directors of child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship programs. On average, child and adolescent psychiatry directors reported lectures of 3 and 4 h per year in autism spectrum disorder and intellectual disability, respectively. Training directors commonly reported that trainees see 1-5 patients with autism spectrum disorder or intellectual disability per year for outpatient pharmacological management and inpatient treatment. Overall, 43% of directors endorsed the need for additional resources for training in autism spectrum disorder and intellectual disability, which, coupled with low didactic and clinical exposure, suggests that current training is inadequate.
Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2014 · doi:10.1177/1362361313477247