ABSTRACT
The autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental disability characterised by persistent impairments in social interaction and the presence of restricted, repetitive patterns of behaviours, interests, or activities.
Our study aimed to evaluate the use of dramatherapy with a small group of subjects with ASD, aged between 8 and 16 years, with moderate/mild learning disabilities.
In the course of 24 dramatherapy sessions, we proposed activities aimed at building a role (your own hero), adding to each session a detail to characterise it and following a simplified scheme of the hero's journey to create the stories of the various characters. In stories, children interacted with each other through their own roles and emotions; they confronted obstacles and encountered variables and limits by working on personal frustration. They were encouraged to observe each other and to develop their own imitative capacities and creativity.
We analysed in detail the effects of the dramatherapy process on the following behaviours: difficulties in storytelling, difficulties in the recognition, expression, management, and representation/verbalisation of emotions, poor tolerance for frustration, poor self-awareness, rigidity of thought and action related to limits in imaginative thinking and creativity. The outcomes were assessed through the combined use of specific scales for autism and the assessment of dramatic abilities. These outcome measures are both quantitative (Grid of observation of individual dramatic abilities, Psychlops Questionnaire, CARS scale) and qualitative (Grid of neuro-psychomotor observation, 6-PSM, clock of emotions).
