Selective Mutism Peer Group (in person)
SM Peer Group
SM Group provides opportunity for children with SM to practice their skills in a group format. Group participants are matched based on age and clinical need to offer appropriate environment for talking practice. Groups targets talking practice and development of pragmatic speech skills.
Groups may occur in the office or in the community, when appropriate, to meet the goals of the group and support generalization of talking gains.
SPACE: Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions
What is SPACE?
SPACE stands for Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions and is a parent-based treatment program for children and adolescents with anxiety, OCD, and related problems.
SPACE was developed by Dr. Eli Lebowitz at the Yale Child Study Center and has been tested and found to be efficacious in randomized controlled clinical trials.
Who are space groups for? Who is the patient?
SPACE aims to treat children and adolescents with anxiety disorders and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Although children do not have to attend SPACE sessions - they are the patients! When SPACE treatment is successful children feel less anxious and function better following treatment.
Some of the main anxiety problems treated with SPACE include:
Separation anxiety
Social anxiety
Generalized anxiety
Fears and phobias
Panic disorder and Agoraphobia
Selective mutism
Obsessive-compulsive disorder
who participates in treatment?
Parents (and other caregivers) participate in SPACE treatment sessions. In most cases the child or adolescent does not need to attend the treatment sessions.
What happens in treatment?
Parents who participate in SPACE will learn skills and tools to help their child overcome anxiety, OCD or related problems.
The treatment focuses on changes that parents can make to their own behavior, they do not need to make their child change.
The two main changes that parents learn to make in SPACE treatment are to respond more supportively to their anxious child and to reduce the accommodations they have been making to the child symptoms.
Providers at Child and Family Therapy Collective
Eleanor Ezell, LCSW, Clinical Director