Speech-language-hearing therapy and clinical listening in a mental health team: perception of parents of children with autism spectrum disorder

Abstract

Purpose: to analyze the effects of clinical listening in the discourse of parents of children with autism about the speech-language-hearing work in the team of a Children and Youth Psychosocial Attention Center (Centro de Atenção Psicossocial Infanto-Juvenil). Methods: a descriptive case study research with nine parents of children with autism. Results: the parents recognize, in the therapeutic experience with the speech-language-hearing therapist, changes in the quality of communication and relationship with their children, becoming more linguistically open and interesting figures to their children, because they understand the communication dynamics and feel ready to develop it. The parents incorporated the idea that it is through a shared playing that their children develop both subjectively and cognitively. They realize that the change and interaction with and between their children, as proposed by the speech-language-hearing therapy, generate care and enlarge the social repertoire of communication. Conclusion: speech-language-hearing therapy was considered as belonging and fundamental to the field of mental health in the work with children with autism, which reinforces the listening offered to the parents by the team.