The National Autism Center at May Institute is dedicated to serving autistic children and adolescents by providing reliable information, promoting best practices, and offering comprehensive resources for families, practitioners, and communities.
In 2009, the National Autism Center completed a multi-year project — the National Standards Project — to establish a set of standards for effective, research-validated educational and behavioral interventions for children on the spectrum. These standards identify treatments that effectively target the core symptoms of ASD. The resulting National Standards Report is the most comprehensive analysis available to date about treatments for autistic children and adolescents. It is a single, authoritative source of guidance for parents, caregivers, educators, and service providers as they make informed treatment decisions.
In 2015, the center released a new review and analysis of treatments for ASD based on research conducted in the field from 2007 to 2012. This report provides an update to the empirical treatment literature (as published in the National Standards Report in 2009) and includes studies evaluating treatments for adults (22+), which had never before been systematically evaluated.