Summer Opportunity: Selective Mutism Training

After looking into opportunities that were offered during the break I had between my summer semester and fall semester I found one that really intrigued me. I received an email for an opportunity to work as a counselor with advanced therapeutic solutions (ATS) in Oakbrook, IL. working with children with Selective mutism. Selective Mutism is defined in the “Selective Mutism Resource Manual” by Maggie Johnson & Alison Wintgens (2001) as, “An anxiety disorder characterized by consistent failure to speak in specific social situations where there is an expectation to do so (e.g. school or occupation) despite being able to speak in other situations.” This definition seems to be the most common definition of the disorder and comes from the DSM-V criteria. The criteria for the diagnosis of selective mutism in the DSM-V is as follows: A. consistent failure to speak in specific social situations in which there is an expectation for speaking (e.g., at school) despite speaking in other situations.

B. The disturbance interferes with educational or occupational achievement or with social communication.

C. The duration of the disturbance is at least 1 month (not limited to the first month of school).

D. The failure to speak is not attributable to a lack of knowledge of, or comfort with, the spoken language required in the social situation.

E. The disturbance is not better explained by a communication disorder (e.g. childhood-onset fluency disorder) and does not occur exclusively during the course of autism spectrum disorder, schizophrenia, or another psychotic disorder. (American Psychiatric Association, 2013).” When I saw the email I knew that it was a perfect opportunity for me as I would be able to work with children and adolescents in a counseling setting for the first time. Therefore, I applied for a counselor position and, after going through the interview process, was one of the interviewees selected. Upon selection I was told that I must participate in: 1) A training weekend June 24th-26th where I would learn the treatment process and how ATS utilizes PCIT-SM 2) A week of lead-in sessions where each counselor works with two children in the therapy offices to help prepare them for the week of adventure camp and 3) The final week which is adventure camp! This week goals are set each day for each child and are documented if they achieved the set goals or not. The first two days are spent with the same child and then the third day starts with the same child but rotates to another child for the rest of the week to help with generalization. So below you will find my notes and thoughts that were written for each day of the process. Thank you for reading and I hope you are able to see the joy that I have had in participating in this experience.

Training Weekend: These days were such a whirlwind between the training and trying to write papers for the ending of my summer session I didn’t get to write about them immediately. Thus, a summary regarding this time is all I can provide. There were a lot of presentations/educational opportunities provided as well as dyads where we practiced the skills that were presented. A massive benefit to me was that I conducted a fair amount of research, requested my paper topic to be in regards to selective mutism, and gave a presentation on selective mutism in one of my summer classes.

This was a benefit to me because then when I attended the presentations during the training weekend I was better versed in selective mutism and was able to feel a strong connection with the presentations and a desire to work with the children and adolescents I am going to see during camp. Another interesting part of our training weekend was the 2 hours dedicated to working with a pair of improvisation specialists. These specialists came and taught the group to use improvisation not just to know how to do it but also to help us experience higher levels of anxiety because we were doing things that we typically would not be comfortable doing in front of others that we didn’t know well.

These exercises helped me with grasping a finer understanding of what these children and adolescents are experiencing and how we are asking them to “Use Your Brave” by speaking to us. When we were doing the improvisation I participated in an exercise called, “Story, Story, Die” by some improvisation groups. Players, I believe we had 5, form a straight line and a story idea is obtained from others. Our “conductor” starts the game by pointing to a player, who needs to start telling the story. The tricky part is that the conductor can switch and point to another player at any point and they have to continue the story flawlessly, even though the switch most commonly happens in the middle of a sentence.

The one other game I participated in was called, “Every day Olympics” in which I was a commentator and had to describe, like in sports, everything that another player did. The activity that is described is chosen by the audience…in my case I was describing the brushing/flossing of teeth. At first I was anxious participating in all these activities but gradually I became more comfortable with them and it made me think that this may possibly be how children/adolescents with selective mutism feel when they go to adventure camp.