Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) “Therapy”
Welcome to the Explainer Section of our website! Here, you’ll find a collection of short and engaging explanations designed to help people with disabilities reduce the emotional labor of self-advocacy.
More explainers on Autism specifically can be found in the Autism explainer section.
What Is It?
- ABA is typically the main recommendation for sourcing support when Autistic adults are first diagnosed. ABA is by far the most common type of “Autism specialist” out there.
- Therapists with an Autism specialty also tend to be less affordable.
- When Autistic adults seek therapy elsewhere for depression, or even PTSD, a therapist is allowed and even encouraged to decline care to an Autistic person because they are not an Autism “specialist.”
- An Autistic person is likely to have comorbidities, like ADHD.
- Someone with these two diagnoses reaching out to an ADHD specialist, as an example, can be turned down by that ADHD specialist because they are not also specialized in Autism.
Most therapy strategies are a product of the researchers’ demographics, which means therapists with clients from marginalized groups often have to work with them to adapt primarily White, cis, upper-class contexts to their patient.
- Unfortunately, the fact that Autism is not treated as a valid minority category worth learning about means that therapists can shut down their client for advocating for themselves in therapy and say “I am not trained to deal with your Autism.”
- … rather than being curious about how to support and working with the human being in front of them to adapt strategies to a neurominority.
- Despite having a license in psychology, therapists are not required to have a basic understanding of neurodivergence.
The takeaway is that therapy adapted to support the challenges of Autistic people should not include learning neurotypical social skills.
ABA Mutations
The field of psychology continues to create “new” versions of ABA.
Unfortunately many of the recent innovations in mainstream support for Autistic folk are simply ABA being repackaged. The fundamental emphasis on having the Autistic person taking responsibility for masking remains ever-present.
ABA: TLDR
We cannot change how research is done until we understand as a society that Autism and Autistic traits at a fundamental level need to be accepted in our daily lives. It means changing our standards for what is normal so that everyone can be loved, included, and have the opportunity to participate in society.