Abstract
The leisure-rehabilitation programs offered to children and adolescents with autism convey feelings like emotional, social, cognitive, and physical engagement, fun, adventure and sense of novelty. Each activity however has an intrinsic power to influence the emotional pattern in different ways. To define how each type of rehabilitation program can be expected to influence the psychological response di children and adolescent affected by autism; A Delphi study was carried out involving twelve Expert therapists. The aim is to have criteria to personalize the individual rehabilitation plan choosing a mix of activities with more appropriate emotional influence. We applied the Delphi procedure during a workshop with 12 expert therapists (8 females- 4 males), with the aim of assessing the opinion of participants regarding the appropriateness of 11 types of leisure-rehabilitation activities in enhancing 7 types of psychological responses.
The activities with the highest potential for each psychological response were for dramatherapy emotional and cognitive engagement, team sports for social engagement and for fun, indoor climbing for physical engagement and for sense of adventure, for outdoor visits to museums sense of novelty. The top five activities with the highest overall impact (mean overall score > 7) were in decreasing order: indoor climbing, team sports, outdoor visits to common life environments, outdoor visits to parks and gardens, and dramatherapy. We hope that this Delphi exercise will help the carers of individuals with autism to choose and adapt possible leisure activities according to the specific needs of the subject, maximizing the potential benefit of rehabilitation.