key: cord-0820629-xgki8lld
authors: Kawabe, Kentaro; Hosokawa, Rie; Nakachi, Kiwamu; Yoshino, Ayumi; Horiuchi, Fumie; Ueno, Shu‐ichi
title: Making brochure of Coronavirus disease (COVID‐19) for children with autism spectrum disorder and their family members
date: 2020-06-20
journal: Psychiatry Clin Neurosci
DOI: 10.1111/pcn.13090
sha: 605323ca20fc20f591f5676ec6f409bc6e9c7895
doc_id: 820629
cord_uid: xgki8lld

nan

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) infection is evolving rapidly, with an increase in the number of reported cases and countries affected worldwide. The World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) on January 30, 2020 and a pandemic on March 11. Japan was the third country to register the first case of COVID-19 on January 16, 2020, after China and Thailand. The number of reported COVID-19 cases had rapidly increased from the end of February 2020. Therefore, the Japanese government declared closing all schools from the 1 st through 12 th grades on March 2 and declared a PHEIC on April 7. School and other education facilities' closures substantially disrupt the usual daily life and add stress for children and their families. At the time of writing this paper, Japanese government still continues to close all schools, and imposes to stay at home as much as possible. It is challenging for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to understand the situation and to stay at home 1 . In addition, the care of ASD children could be harder than that of children without ASD. Because ASD is characterized by difficulties in reciprocal social interaction skills, deficits in communication skills, stereotypic, obsessive, or repetitive behaviors, and restricted patterns of interests and activities 2 . Under the PHEIC, child This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

psychiatrists must consider what can be done for ASD children under this stressful situation. As for the situation above, we developed a supportive brochure about COVID-19 for both ASD children and their family members, who were able to be communicated by online devices. The main benefit we aimed was to help ASD children understand COVID-19 with visual supporting methods.

The brochure was made of three parts. The first part is the purpose of this brochure and characteristics of ASD. The second is to explain coronavirus infection and how to protect it. The third is how to manage the life with staying indoors. All contents were explained with handwritten original illustrations (cartoons) because visual support is helpful to understand the contents, especially for ASD children. This brochure can be downloaded for everyone from the homepage 3 , and the URL address was sent to parents of 262 ASD children by a letter. However, it is written only in Japanese. friends, teachers, and healthcare practitioners. Parents of children with ASD showed significantly elevated parenting-related stress levels compared to those with typically developing children 5 . Providing greater parental leeway has a good influence on children with ASD. The social utility of mental health professionals in the management of the COVID-19 outbreak is confirmed 6 . Therefore, we should provide the mental health support not only to children with ASD but also their family.

In conclusion, COVID-19 is an emerging illness that is rapidly spreading through Japan and the rest of the world. This brochure could aid parents to provide interventions for children with ASD. We have not collected the parents' comments on the brochure yet. We will assess the effect of this trial in future studies.

The authors declare no conflicts of interest. (d) Find a shared interest: Encourage activities and subjects that the child is naturally interested in. This image has been included in regards to ASD patients with restricted interests. He or she may be willing to engage with family members about a specific interest such as trains, national flag, animals, insects, maps, history, etc..., which can serve as an opportunity to bond together.

This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. (c) Structure their lifestyle: Time and place management is very important for ASD children. Both verbal and visual information will help ASD children understand that their daily lifestyle has changed. For that purpose, it might be helpful for each family member to write his or her planned activities on a common whiteboard after communicating them verbally. (d) Find a shared interest: Encourage activities and subjects that the child is naturally interested in. This image has been included in regards to ASD patients with restricted interests. He or she may be willing to engage with family members about a specific interest such as trains, national flag, animals, insects, maps, history, etc..., which can serve as an opportunity to bond together.

This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

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