holding therapy!??

Post Reply New Topic

(move plz mods if this post in the wrong spot)

I was wondering If there was anyone out there who know of and have possibly undergone this type of therapy. For those who dont know, holding therapy or Atachment Therapy (not to be confused with attachement parenting which is the direct oposite). Is a treatment used for Adults and kids who are Autistic, Agressive, or shown to have Attachment Disorders. The child/person is physicaly restrained ( almost always by a parent or a trusted care giver) and then harrased by the therapst in order to provoke a fear and rage response, and therefore cause a breakdown in which the parent can comfort the child. sessions can last anywhere from minutes to hours, and in more extreeme cases, the children are even sent away to a foster family where they endure boot camp like atmosphre in order to break them of their habbits. http://www.neurodiversity.com/holding_therapy.html.
They are saying its a useful and powerful treatment for AS autism and Attachment disorders.
looks more like abuse to me. A few kids have died from their so called "treatment"
I am angered by a socioty that would allow this kind of abuse in the name of fixing anyone.

what are your opinons?

oh
my
gods

This quackery is STILL LEGAL?

I dont see how provoking someones fears could be therapy....sounds more like torture/abuse.

That sounds HORRIBLE. And wouldn't the holding just make it worse? When i'm overwhelmed, the last thing i want is for someone to "hold" me and make it worse. Doing it with an adult with much strength at all sounds like a good way for the "therapists" and parents to get hurt.

Also the "trusted" holder automatically becomes the Betrayer. Where do we go to report these things?
Do you have personal knowledge of it, or know somebody who does?

It's killed people before.

It wouldn't work with me and would only make me more distrustful of people and would result in PTSD. I was agressive and this quackary would only make me more agressive.

People *still* do this? This is old stuff. For a (very poorly) fictionalized version of it, watch "A Change of Habit" (1969) starring Elvis Presley. In the movie, Elvis Presley "cures" an autistic child by holding her during a meltdown until she goes limp.

yes I do have personal knowledge of it. I went through extensive AT therapy as a child. I have almost no memory of when i was age 9- age 12, but what I do remeber still gives me nightmares. for some reason. I never broke. They even went so far as to put me on drugs and take me away from my family, where I was placed in a foster home and forced to exclusivly care for a mean elderly and disabled old man, (I was 11 at the time), and do endless chores, and pushups. When I wasnt with that foster family, I was taken to a boot camp, where we had to sit immoble for hours, and If you complained you had to do pushups and other excersizes untill you could proove that you would never be disobeiant again. For some reason..I never broke, and I never understood what it was they wanted me to do. I dont remember it too well, I only recently found information on what happend to me as a child, when I was looking around at treatments for AS. now I'm afriad whatever it is I have, wasnt genetic at all but a result of this "therapy" I was subjected to as a young child. the shrink that did it, never had a licencse, and the clinc was shut down a few years after my experience.
I still do not feel like I can forgive my adoptive parrents. I do not understand why anyone would sit back and watch their child in that much distress just to make them "normal" I think its sick. I'm glad I cant remember much. There are videos and pictures availible online, but I couldnt bring myself to look at them.

Thing is, somehow I managed to make it past almost all of it. Except for my emotional quirkyness and dislike of human contact I dont notice it much. what really scares me is that they are saying it is a treatment for autism...I fear deeply for anyone having to endure this kind of torture.

I didint want to post from a personal perspetive, because I dont want people worrying about me, I lived, I coped, I'm doing as well as I can.

what I wanted to focus on was the fact that it is still happening, and its not something that is easy to talk about once you have been through it.
So If you have dealt with this or a similar therapy/abuse..your not alone, its not your fault..and maybe If we get a community together we can put a stop to it.

yes it leagal, yes Its abusive, and yes, people still do it.
http://www.childrenintherapy.org/essays/index.html - what is is with a list of practices
http://www.reactiveattachmentdisordertr ... icle3.html - proof that it is still in practice and being used.
http://www.reactiveattachmentdisordertr ... klist.html - the RAD checklist..all aspies/auties beware..this is all you need to qualify, oh, and your not the one taking the test..your caregiver is.

What do you mean "all you need to qualify"?

I don't think the majority of autistics are hurting animals, stealing, being sexually inappropriate etc. It would take a sh***y parent (i.e. someone to give "holding therapy" a serious try in the first place) to lie through the checklist.

Unfortunately, autistics are targeted for many sorts of abuse. Institutional abuse is one of them. My parents used to hold me down when I had meltdowns, too, until I didn't have the energy to move anymore. It's the worst possible thing you can do.

Human resilience makes it possible to recover, though. People who are abused are not "damaged goods"; they're people who've been through a bad experience, and who will be forever different because of it; but who still have the potential for happiness and fulfillment, as any human being does. Abuse is horrible to experience and horrible to hear about; but I firmly believe that getting yourself back and getting your life back is always possible. Human beings are just tough like that.

Kiwi, when was this, when you went to the "boot camp"? I'm hearing about quite a lot of modern institutions that are doing things like that, and it infuriates me to know they are still doing things like this.

I'm glad that my parents never did this trick, on me. They had enough sense, not to do it.

Didn't a little girl get smothered to death from this threapy before?

Warning: this can be painful to watch, despite the very hokey ending.

Elvis Presley and Mary Tyler Moore "cure" autism:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjdUt3G7Maw&feature=related[/youtube]

all you need to qualify for a dx of attachment disorder, and therefore holding therapy is for a loved one or caregiver to fill out that questionare, they also have one for infants which in my opinion is equaly if not more scary.

I was 12, it was for a month. I was taken away from home and I lived with a foster family at the time. ( i had no knowledge of this before hand or how long it was going to be) All of it was part of my "therapy" and meant to reintroduce feelings of abandonment by my birth mother. (I was adopted when I was 2 and I dont even remember my birth mother) all It realy did was reinforce the fact that no one wanted me. well, except for me. that was what kept me sane. I wanted me. lol I liked me. and even though I didint know If i would ever see my family again. I was still me.