Nature as a Healer for Autistic Children
Abstract
The reason for many of autistic children’s symptoms is sensory integration; it is the power to understand, organize, and feel sensory data from the environment and body. The issues surrounding sensory integration are presented in hyposensitive and hypersensitive reactions by children with autism to the vestibular, proprioception, tactile, audio, visual, and olfactory senses.
A great deal of research has been conducted on gardens and their effect on health outcomes and how a garden may provide benefit:
1. Relief from physical symptoms or awareness of those symptoms.
2. Stress reduction.
3. Improvement in overall sense of well-being.
The aim of this paper is to establish a group of guidelines for designing a therapeutic garden for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder to treat the sensory integration problems of children with ASD by designing a sensory garden which should focus on therapeutic interference. By using the elements and principles of design, the guidelines for this garden are focused on producing calming effects for hyper reactive children with ASD and stimulating effects for hypo reactions.
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Copyright (c) 2018 Hadeer Barakat, Ali Foaad Bakr, Zeyad El-sayad
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Article Details
Accepted 2018-07-31
Published 2018-07-31