40 Sarah Feuerbacher, Travis Moore and Hannah Gill
Prevention program: A case study
Located at a counseling center on a university campus, weekly counseling groups
were held for a large cohort of adults with ASD. Participation in the groups was
not mandatory for these individuals; however, many of them chose to participate
in these groups for multiple terms. Most of these young adults had few or no
friends, and group members in the weekly counseling groups discussed their
lack of social relationships and how the lack of friendships affected their lives.
The research team consisted of a lead professor and several interns in the
university’s Masters of Counseling program. Together they created four highly
specialized processing groups that focused on the following topics with the
respective team names. The group “Teambuilding Taskforce” consisted of social
males participating in their first group curriculum which focused on increasing
social awareness, building peer empathy, and learning teamwork and cohesiveness.
The “Social Skills Squad” was a group consisting of quieter males participating
in their first curriculum which focused on self-understanding and interper-
sonal learning, extrapolating feelings and internal thinking processes, learning
self-catharsis, and increasing self-esteem. The “Communication Nation” was a
group of males who had successfully completed a previous group curriculum
and wished to continue participation in more advanced groups that focused on
engaging their strengths, finding community, and working to achieve fulfilled
lives. The “Female Force” was a female-specific group focusing on the unique
experiences that females with ASD encounter and supporting the differences
they have from their male counterparts. Each group had two co-facilitators and
between four and nine group participants, depending on the level of functioning
relative to each individual.
The counseling groups were aimed at increasing group members’ overall
well-being through strengthening their team building, social functioning, and com-
munication skills. The groups were primarily activity based. Typically, group facili-
tators assisted group members in completing a weekly activity and then processing
the activity as a group. Themes of the weekly sessions included self-esteem, social
development, verbal and nonverbal communication, feedback, encouragement, and
more. The theme and weekly activity for each group was specially chosen by the
group facilitators to meet the needs of the group; therefore, each group typically
had a different activity each week.
The researchers examined the impact of weekly group counseling on the
participants for the purpose of showing how powerful social inclusion can be
on the participants’ lives. To do this, the researchers assessed groups members’
functioning in multiple areas of their lives before they began participation in
the groups, and again after they completed eight weeks of participation in the
groups, which marked the conclusion of a group’s term. Holistic areas examined
included social life, view of self, school and work life, overall functioning, and
more. Furthermore, the researchers surveyed group members at the conclu-
sion of each week’s group session, asking them to note their current feelings,