At Mass ABA last week, I had the pleasure of attending not one, but two talks by Dr. Mark Dixon, of Southern Illinois University. Before going any further, if you take nothing else from this post, I encourage you to attend one of his talks if you have the opportunity. He is one of those presenters who is as funny as he is thought provoking. Dr. Dixon also has that rare ability to talk about really sophisticated topics while at the same time sounding like a, “regular guy.”
Both of his talks featured some discussion of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT for short. I’ve been doing some reading on ACT for a few months now, but most of what I have read about ACT was in the realm of counseling or clinical psychology (e.g., ACT for Anxiety, ACT for couples work, ACT for PTSD; you get the idea…).
Dixon’t first talk reviewed his research on behavioral approaches to understanding, and more specifically, functionally assessing problematic gambling behaviors. During that discussion, he described using an ACT approach to treating people with gambling problems, and like with the application of ACT to a wide variety of other problems, the interventions were generally successful.
Dixon’s second talk discussed the use of ACT for Children with Autism and Emotional Challenges (which is actually the title of the book). The book is on its way to me via Amazon, so I’ll share my thoughts about it once I get a chance to check it out. Prior to doing that, I’ll plan on posting a general overview of the ACT process for those readers who are not familiar with it.
If you have a minute, let me know if you are familiar with ACT, and if so, how do you use it in your own work.
Thanks!