World Autism Awareness Day commemorates the period set aside to develop insight and promote solutions for those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Although the classic therapies of applied behavior analysis (ABA), speech therapy, and occupational therapy have been the standard intervention for autism, there has been an increasing interest in a different method: play therapy. Advoctates purport that play therapy stimulates a child's intrinsic method of acquiring knowledge, supporting communication, interpersonal skills, and emotional balance more effectively than can often be provided by mainstream interventions. Is play therapy the secret ingredient of autism intervention?

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) impacts a child's capacity to communicate, socialize, and use imaginative play. Compared to neurotypical children, autistic children tend to have difficulties with pretend play and usually have a strong interest in particular activities. With these difficulties in mind, therapeutic interventions that address their needs are highly important. One of these interventions is play therapy, which is a structured but fun means of helping autistic children acquire vital life skills.

Play is the language of children, being a universal way of communication and learning. The Association for Play Therapy (APT) describes play therapy as the "systematic use of a theoretical model to establish an interpersonal process wherein trained play therapists use the therapeutic powers of play to help clients prevent or resolve psychosocial difficulties and achieve optimal growth and development." (APT, 2021).

In autistic children, play therapy provides a fun and organized setting to understand feelings, rehearse social interactions, and improve communication. A professional therapist helps the child progress through play-based strategies that promote self-expression and establish healthy relationships with parents, siblings, and friends.

Why Play Therapy Works for Autistic Children?

Play therapy is especially effective for children with ASD because it works within their natural learning and interaction style. It offers a low-stress, safe space in which children can:

• Learn social skills like turn-taking and understanding nonverbal communication.
• Enhance communication through verbal and nonverbal interaction.
• Learn to regulate emotions in order to cope with frustration and anxiety.
• Develop problem-solving and cognitive flexibility.
• Decrease anxiety and build confidence in social situations.

Because autistic children tend to interact with play differently—e.g., becoming fixated on the components of a toy instead of the object as a whole or having difficulty with pretend play—therapists employ systematic methods to enable them to connect with their environment and the individuals in it.

Types of Play Therapy for Autism

Play therapy involves a variety of methods adapted to a child's individual needs. Some of the most useful types for autistic children are:

Child-Centered Play Therapy (CCPT)

CCPT emphasizes establishing a nonjudgmental and accepting environment in which children are able to express themselves spontaneously. The therapist becomes the facilitator, with the child selecting activities of play while being treated with empathy and acceptance. This creates an atmosphere of safety and trust, with children able to explore their emotions and build up social skills organically.

Structured Play Therapy

Unlike CCPT, structured play therapy involves specific activities designed to target particular developmental goals. These sessions help autistic children develop essential skills in a step-by-step manner, ensuring they feel comfortable and supported.

Cognitive Behavioral Play Therapy (CBPT)

CBPT is an integration of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) with play therapy to assist children in identifying and managing their emotions. CBPT is particularly beneficial for children experiencing anxiety, frustration, or challenges with the adaptation to new circumstances.

Benefits of Play Therapy for Children with Autism

Enhanced Communication Skills

Play therapy allows autistic children to exercise verbal and nonverbal communication. By means of spoken language, gestures, or interactive stories, children become more at ease with self-expression.

Increased Social Interaction

Through play with a guide, children exercise basic social skills like turn-taking, sharing, and reading body language. These social skills enable them to develop more positive relationships with family members and peers.

Emotional Regulation and Coping Strategies

Play therapy provides a secure environment where children can experiment and learn to deal with their feelings. Therapists can demonstrate skills like deep breathing or the use of a "calm-down" toy to assist children in dealing with frustration and stress.

Problem-Solving and Cognitive Flexibility

Structured play activities encourage children to think creatively, adapt to new scenarios, and develop planning skills. This can be particularly helpful in improving their ability to adjust to changing routines or social expectations.

Reduced Anxiety and Increased Confidence

By providing a playful and interactive setting, play therapy makes autistic children less apprehensive about social interactions and new experiences. Gradually, this increases their confidence and readiness to interact with the world around them.

Play Therapy Activities for Autistic Children

Including therapeutic play activities at home can further increase the advantages of professional play therapy. Some ideas include:

Gross Motor Games

Obstacle Course: Create an indoor obstacle course with pillows, chairs, and painter's tape. Have your child jump, spin, and crawl through the various sections to promote coordination and sensory integration.

Tilt a Ball: Cut a hole at the bottom of a cardboard box to make a basic ball maze. Have your child tilt the box to direct the ball through the maze to develop hand-eye coordination.

Fine Motor Games

Free the Animals: Secure plastic toy animals with painter’s tape and have your child peel them off to strengthen fine motor skills.

Clay Sculpting: Use therapy putty or clay to model different shapes or animals, enhancing dexterity and creativity.

Interactive and Group Play Activities

Scavenger Hunt: Create a themed scavenger hunt to encourage problem-solving and exploration.

Ribbon Wand Dancing: Place ribbons on wooden spoons and invite dancing to music, enhancing gross motor skills and sensory awareness.

Row, Row, Row Your Boat: A cooperative game wherein children rock back and forth as they sing, enhancing cooperative play and rhythmic movement.

Role of Parents in Play Therapy

Parent participation is essential to the success of play therapy. By attending therapy sessions and applying learned skills in everyday life, parents can support gains and create further opportunities for development. Parents are frequently taught by therapists to use play-based strategies to facilitate communication, emotional control, and social interaction within the home environment.

Choosing the Right Play Therapy for Your Child

When selecting a play therapist, keep the following in mind:

Credentials: Seek professionals who hold a psychology, social work, or counseling degree, and play therapy certifications (e.g., Registered Play Therapist, RPT).

Experience: Opt for a therapist experienced in treating autistic children, as they will have in-depth knowledge of ASD-specific issues.

Approach: Talk to various therapy approaches to select the one that will best suit your child's needs and personality.

How Can Parents Support Play Therapy at Home?

To ensure maximum returns from play therapy, parents can:

• Encourage play learning: Integrate therapy skills into daily life.
• Design a supportive play environment: Create a quiet, stimulating area with sensory-friendly materials.
• Learn from sessions: Use therapist-recommended techniques to build on progress in the home environment.

Play therapy is an effective intervention for autistic children, providing a natural and fun means of establishing communication, social, and emotional skills. With the help of trained therapists and the integration of play-based strategies at home, parents can facilitate their children in acquiring key life skills in a fun and nurturing environment. Consulting professional services and remaining actively engaged in the therapy process ensures that autistic children get the assistance they require to flourish.

Emergency rooms are handing out significantly fewer opioid prescriptions to people experiencing lower back pain. Researchers reported in the Annals of Emergency Medicine on July 12 that the rate of opioid prescriptions for back pain in ERs dropped by more than half between 2016 and 2022.

Dramatic Decline in Opioid Prescribing

Just a few years ago, in 2016, almost one out of every three visits to the ER for back pain ended with a prescription for opioid painkillers. But by 2022, that number had fallen dramatically to just over one in ten visits. This big drop means that doctors are learning from the available information and changing the way they practice medicine, especially as more people become aware of the widespread problems caused by opioid addiction. It's a positive sign that medical professionals are actively working to curb the opioid crisis.

Understanding the Study and Patient Experience

To figure this out, researchers looked at records from nearly 53 million ER visits for low back pain that happened between 2016 and 2022. These records were gathered by a national health statistics centre. The study found that when people went to the ER for back pain, they were usually in a lot of discomfort, rating their pain at more than 7 out of 10. On average, they had to wait about 37 minutes before a doctor saw them and spent around four hours in the emergency room getting treatment.

Why Opioid Usage Is Risky For Patients

A 2023 study even found that opioids may not be as effective for back pain. Published in the JAMA network, a 2023 study conducted a trial on those who were experiencing back pain. The trial involved 347 adults who had been experiencing pain for up to 12 weeks. Everyone in the study received standard care, which included reassurance, advice to avoid bed rest, and encouragement to stay active. Half of the participants also received a combination of oxycodone and naloxone (an opioid), while the other half received a placebo (a dummy pill).

The study also revealed that while side effects were similar for both groups, there was a significant difference in the risk of opioid misuse. One year later, 20% of the participants who took opioids were at risk of misusing them, compared to only 10% of those who received the placebo. This suggests that even for short-term pain relief, opioids carry a greater risk of future misuse.

NSAIDs Emerge as Preferred Treatment

Now, when you go to the ER with low back pain, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, often called NSAIDs (like ibuprofen), are the most common painkillers prescribed. They're given to almost 29% of patients. It's not just about prescriptions either; fewer patients are actually given opioids while they are being treated in the ER. That number went down from 35% of cases in 2016 to less than 25% by 2020, showing a clear shift away from immediate opioid use during emergency care for back pain.

Next Issues People Must Tackle

Even though there's good progress with reducing opioids, ER doctors still have some areas where they could improve how they treat back pain. For example, many patients with back pain are still getting X-rays that they don't really need. In 2022, about 37% of patients had an X-ray, which is pretty much the same as in 2015. In fact, in 2021, almost 44% of cases involved an X-ray, which was the highest rate. It's tough to get this number down because deciding whether to order an X-ray can be complicated and depends on what both the doctor and the patient think is best.

Doctors may soon have a powerful new tool to help catch a serious eye disease caused by diabetes. Researchers have created an AI-powered retina tracker that is incredibly accurate at finding diabetic retinopathy, a condition that can lead to blindness. In a news release by the Endocrine Society, researchers detail how this new AI technology revolutionizes health and eye care, bringing it to the next level.

Fast, Accurate, and Accessible Eye Screening

This new program, called the Simple Mobile AI Retina Tracker (SMART), showed over 99% accuracy in its ability to screen for diabetic retinopathy. This impressive result was announced recently at a medical conference.

SMART uses advanced AI to quickly and accurately look at images of the retina – the light-sensing part at the back of your eye. What makes it truly special is that it can work on any device with internet access, even basic smartphones.

This means eye specialists can screen patients more easily and quickly. It also allows general doctors to include eye exams during regular visits. Most importantly, it helps bring high-quality eye checks to places where there aren't many eye doctors.

Tackling Diabetic Retinopathy

Diabetic retinopathy is a condition where tiny blood vessels in the eye leak and damage the retina. It's a major cause of blinedness that could be prevented, affecting over 100 million people worldwide.

To develop SMART, researchers trained the AI using thousands of retinal images from a diverse group of patients across six continents. When they tested the AI on new images, it could detect diabetic retinopathy almost every time, processing each image in less than one second. The tracker could also tell the difference between diabetic retinopathy and other eye conditions.

Symptoms And Issues Associated With Diabetic Retinopathy

According to the US National Eye Institute, Diabetic retinopathy is an eye problem that can affect anyone with diabetes. It happens when high blood sugar damages the tiny blood vessels in your retina, the light-sensing part at the back of your eye. Early detection and managing your diabetes are key to protecting your vision.

Diabetes harms blood vessels throughout your entire body. In your eyes, this damage begins when high blood sugar changes the tiny blood vessels that feed your retina. These changes make it harder for blood to flow, leading to some blood vessels getting blocked or starting to leak fluid or blood.

Warning Signs

In its early stages, you usually won't notice any problems with your vision. However, some people might notice subtle changes, like difficulty reading or seeing things far away. These changes might even come and go.

As the condition gets worse, blood vessels in your retina can start to bleed into the jelly-like fluid that fills your eye. If this happens, you might see dark, floating spots or streaks, almost like cobwebs. Sometimes these spots clear up on their own, but it's crucial to get medical help right away. If left untreated, scars can form at the back of your eye, or the bleeding might start again or get worse.

Who Will This New AI Help?

Developing this new AI has the potential to make eye care available to a vast number of people globally, simply by using mobile technology. Experts believe this innovation could screen billions worldwide, significantly cutting down vision loss from diabetic retinopathy. It could also completely change how healthcare is provided.

Anyone with diabetes can get diabetic retinopathy, whether they have type 1, type 2, or gestational diabetes (diabetes that develops during pregnancy).

Your risk goes up the longer you've had diabetes. In fact, over half of people with diabetes will develop diabetic retinopathy eventually. The good news is that you can significantly lower your risk by keeping your blood sugar levels under control.

Women with diabetes who become pregnant, or those who develop gestational diabetes, are at a higher risk. If you have diabetes and are pregnant, you should get a full eye exam with dilated pupils as soon as possible.

This research highlights how AI can be a positive force, helping to bridge gaps in medical care and offering hope to millions who are at risk of losing their sight.

It is not uncommon for doctors to misidentify a health condition or misdiagnose due to lack of information or conflicting symptoms. However, many times these mistakes can lead the patient to get the wrong treatment, and cause problems like prolonged treatment, more health problems as well as patients feeling unheard.

A new report suggests that doctors are often missing a common, hormone-related reason for high blood pressure. This overlooked condition, called primary aldosteronism, could be affecting a significant number of people with high blood pressure without them even knowing. According to a study published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, most doctors fail to identify this condition, even though it is the most common cause of high blood pressure.

More Common Than Thought

Research shows that as many as 30% of high blood pressure patients seen by heart specialists, and 14% of those seen by general doctors, actually have primary aldosteronism. This condition occurs when the adrenal glands (small glands located on top of your kidneys) produce too much of a hormone called aldosterone.

Despite how common it might be, many people with high blood pressure are never given a simple blood test to check for primary aldosteronism. In other cases, they might finally be tested years after their high blood pressure diagnosis. By this time, the condition can already lead to serious health problems.

Misdiagnoses in other health problems are also very common. According to a 2023 study published in the JAMA journal, every year, a staggering number of people—around 795,000—either die or are left with permanent disabilities because of mistakes in their diagnosis or related issues in healthcare. Even with a more conservative estimate, the number is still very high, at about 549,000 people harmed.

Why Is It Important to Diagnose?

People with primary aldosteronism face a higher risk of heart and blood vessel problems compared to those with regular high blood pressure.

Aldosterone helps control the balance of sodium (salt) and potassium in your blood. When aldosterone levels are too high, your body can lose too much potassium and hold onto too much sodium, which directly leads to higher blood pressure. Studies have shown that individuals with primary aldosterosteronism are:

• Nearly 2.6 times more likely to have a stroke.
• Twice as likely to experience heart failure.
• 3.5 times more likely to develop an irregular heartbeat.
• 77% more likely to end up with heart disease.

A simple and inexpensive blood test could help identify more people with primary aldosteronism, ensuring they get the right treatment.

New Guidelines and Treatment Options

The new report suggests that everyone diagnosed with high blood pressure should have their aldosterone levels checked. If primary aldosteronism is found, specific treatments for that condition should be given.

There are prescription medications available to treat primary aldosteronism. These include drugs like spironolactone and eplerenone, which help lower blood pressure and increase potassium levels in the body.

Doctors might also recommend surgery to remove one of the two adrenal glands if only one gland is making too much aldosterone. Patients are also usually advised to follow a balanced low-sodium diet and try to lose weight to help manage the condition.