Psychology Professor Grace Baron publishes book on stress and autism

Professor of Psychology Grace Baron, a veteran clinician and researcher in the field of autism, has co-edited the book Stress and Coping in Autism (Oxford University Press, 2006), the first comprehensive look at this important dimension of the puzzling disorder and its treatment.

Autism is a neurological disorder, typically appearing in early childhood, that impairs a person's ability to communicate and interact socially. For persons living with autism, life's stresses can have a profound impact on mental health and the ability to learn, especially because these individuals cannot easily communicate their feelings of frustration or ask for help. Edited by Baron and three of her colleagues at the Groden Center of Providence, R.I., the new volume collects 15 papers by researchers, clinicians, teachers and persons living with autism. The 19 contributors from the U.S., Canada and Australia offer a range of perspectives--biological, psychological and personal--on how stress influences the lives of those with autism and how clinicians, teachers and family members can reduce its impact.

"Growing up without typical communication abilities, often without friends, and without opportunities to develop self-control, people with autism may not naturally develop that critical set of buffers to life stress that we all need," Baron says.

At the Groden Center, a treatment center and school for children with autism and developmental disabilities, Baron and her colleagues have worked to teach communication strategies to people with autism, to improve the quality of their social interaction, and to strengthen their self-control through techniques such as the relaxation response, "all in the context of positive, meaningful, long-term, evolving relationships with teachers and clinicians," Baron notes. In this volume, she and colleagues June Groden and Gerald Groden (University of Rhode Island) and Lewis P. Lipsitt (Brown University, emeritus) leverage 30 years of clinical and research experience as they present a theoretical framework for understanding the role of stress in autism.

By focusing on stress and coping, Baron hopes the book will "help us not only to understand and treat autism better, but most importantly, help us see people with autism as more like you and me."

Baron is co-author of four of the book's articles, including one on research and practice with Mathew S. Goodwin, Wheaton Class of '98, now a Ph.D. candidate at URI and research coordinator at the Groden Center. Kathleen Morgan, Williams Associate Professor of Psychobiology at Wheaton, contributed a piece titled ''Is Autism a Stress Disorder? What Studies of Nonautistic Populations Can Tell Us.'' In her article, Morgan reviews the biobehavioral consequences of stress in a number of species and posits a provocative hypothesis that autism may be a kind of stress disorder.