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Article originally published here. 

New study shows how to support caretakers of children with autism who run away, wander

By Ellen Eldridge, Senior Health Care Reporter, Georgia Public Broadcasting

Autism is a developmental disorder characterized by delays in social communication as well as repetitive interests and restricted behaviors. 

Many individuals with autism engage in complex behaviors, which includes elopement as well things like aggression or self-injury, said Mindy Scheithauer, a psychologist and behavior analyst at the Marcus Autism Center with Children's Healthcare of Atlanta and an associate professor at Emory University School of Medicine.

She said that while prevalence of autism spectrum disorder has increased, the specific causes are multifaceted, including more frequent detection, Scheithauer said.

"We know that vaccines don't cause autism, but we don't have an exact equation of what does," she said.

Elopement means engaging in behavior that puts children outside of supervision, she said. Sometimes, it resembles an Alzheimer's patient behavior where kids might, for example, wake up in the middle of the night and wander outside. 

"A lot of times that kind of elopement has more to do with the child just not understanding," Scheithauer said. "They're curious about what's outside, and they don't understand that it's dangerous to go outside your house at night."

Sometimes, a child sprints away because they want to go look at something else in the grocery store.

The study used a parent coaching treatment to make it less likely that kids would wander away or run away from their parents, specifically kids with autism. 

Therapists met with parents once a week for 12 weeks to discuss topics and better understand the root causes of their children's complex behaviors.

Individuals with autism tend to have delays in communication, so they often develop these other behaviors as a way of kind of telling people in their environment what they want and need, Scheithauer said.

"For example, a child who maybe is leaving school because school feels incredibly overwhelming," she said. "We can figure out better ways for their school to be less overwhelming and so actually get at the root of the problem."

The idea is to meet parents where they are. Researchers also observed the parent and child interactions to figure out why the child is leaving supervision. 

The half of the study's 76 children, who were all between the ages of 4 and 12, that received the treatment found significant improvement in their elopement behavior and in safety related to elopement.

"Our goal of this research is to make it so that it's an easier tool for clinicians so that clinicians are more likely to provide parents with the help that they need for their child's behavior," she said.

Link to this study can be found here.