Mohammed Jajere Adamu, Li Qiang, Charles Okanda Nyatega, Ayesha Younis, Halima Bello Kawuwa, Adamu Halilu Jabire, Sani Saminu
Unraveling the pathophysiology of schizophrenia: insights from structural magnetic resonance imaging studies
Frontiers in psychiatry
social skills interventions commonly recommended help children young people autism spectrum disorder develop social skills struggle engage interventions lego lego system billund denmark based therapy group social skills intervention aims interesting engaging evaluate clinical effectiveness lego based therapy social emotional skills children young people autism spectrum disorder school settings compared usual support secondary objectives included evaluations costeffectiveness acceptability treatment fidelity cluster randomised controlled trial randomly allocating participating schools either lego based therapy usual support usual support mainstream schools north england children young people aged 715 years autism spectrum disorder parentguardian associated teacherteaching assistant facilitator teacherteaching assistant intervention schools schools randomised intervention arm delivered 12 weekly sessions lego based therapy promotes collaborative play encourages social problemsolving groups three children young people facilitator trained teacher teaching assistant participants received usual support school community services participants control arm received usual support research assistants statisticians blind treatment allocation social skills subscale social skills improvement system ssis completed children young peoples unblinded teacher pre randomisation 20 weeks post randomisation ssis social skills subscale measures social skills including social communication cooperation empathy assertion responsibility selfcontrol participants completed number pre postrandomisation measures emotional health quality life loneliness problem behaviours academic competence service resource utilisation adverse events total 250 children young people 98 schools randomised 127 intervention arm 123 control arm intentiontotreat analysis main outcome measure showed modest positive difference 374 points 95 confidence interval 016 763 points standardised effect size 018 p 006 favour intervention arm statistical significance increased perprotocol analysis modest positive difference standardised effect size 021 p 0036 costeffectiveness intervention found reduced service use costs small increase qualityadjusted lifeyears intervention fidelity acceptability positive interventionrelated adverse events effects reported primary preplanned sensitivity analysis primary outcome consistently showed positive clinical difference modest standardised effect sizes 015 021 positive health economics qualitative findings corroborated difference arms majority secondary outcomes statistically significant favoured intervention arm post hoc additional analysis exploratory used drawing conclusion given small positive change lego based therapy children young people autism spectrum disorder schools considered primary outcome measure completed unblinded teacher rather facilitator study team recommends future research lego based therapy particularly school environments trial registered isrctn64852382 award funded national institute health care research nihr public health research programme nihr award ref 154932 published full public health research vol 11 12 see nihr funding awards website award information