RIT researcher blogs for Psychology Today

In his first posting, Dr. Laurence Sugarman gave readers of his online blog at Psychology Today a sense of his approach to helping children with anxiety.

As a pediatrician in Rochester, Sugarman told how he felt ill-equipped to deal with the behavioral problems of the children he treated.

“It seemed to me it was high time to revolutionize health and care by teaching children how they change their minds,” wrote Sugarman, in his introductory mid-May blog.

Sugarman, who since 2011 has been a research professor and director of the Center for Applied Psychophysiology and Self-Regulation at Rochester Institute of Technology, has been in the forefront of using what he calls “self-regulation” and biofeedback for children and adolescents with autism.

Psychology Today senior editor Jennifer Bleyer invited Sugarman to write an online blog about children and self-regulation after RIT told her about his work.

“Laurence Sugarman is really a pioneer in understanding how psychophysiological care makes a difference for children, both those who are on the autism spectrum and those who aren't.” said Bleyer.

His second blog has been featured in the “Essential Reads” on Psychology Today’s website, which has a high readership. Its blogs had about 20 million hits in March alone.

Sugarman’s second blog begins by telling how everyone with autism spectrum disorder “wears the label differently,” and cautions: “We cannot pigeonhole the huge range of intellectual abilities, social talents, language skills and senses of humor ... in this wonderfully diverse group of people.”

The posting is intended to lay the groundwork — to be discussed in subsequent blogs— that people with autism, despite all their differences, share a common problem of controlling their stress — of having anxiety not warranted by external factors.

Sugarman’s blog not only discusses the theoretical but also the practical.

“The blog is important for increasing awareness of new approaches to help children,” said Sugarman, 61, of Pittsford, in a recent interview.

He went on to say, “I think the driving force is using a therapeutic approach that helps kids realize they can help themselves.”

Autism, which is considered a disorder or syndrome, is most commonly estimated to affect one out of every 88 children.

There is no simple definition nor generally agreed upon single cause, but people with autism can have an impaired ability to communicate, can be awkward in their social interactions and tend to focus on a narrow range of activities or behavior.

High anxiety is often found in children who have autism.

Rather than rely on drugs in treating autism, Sugarman stresses self-regulation — teaching people with autism skills so that when they recognize they are stressed, they can control symptoms and be more interactive with others.

“Medicine can provide symptomatic relief, but it doesn’t fix the problems,” he said.

Biofeedback and hypnosis enter into the picture as ways to get an individual to exercise more self-control.

With biofeedback, sensors attached to the person and connected to a computer chart symptoms of anxiety — sweating, heart rate, breathing and skin temperature — so that the person is made more aware of the behavior to be changed.

Hypnosis, said Sugarman, is a tool — a skill set — that can help a therapist better understand the patient and suggest changes in behavior.

In a recent article, “Orienting Hypnosis,” in the American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, Sugarman and co-author Anna E. Hope, who is the clinical research coordinator at RIT’s Center for Applied Psychophysiology and Self-Regulation, decry the misunderstanding about hypnosis.

‘Hypnosis is not something to ‘be in’ or ‘to do,’” they write. “Hypnosis is a skill set to help change minds.”

JGOODMAN@DemocratandChronicle

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