[A mentalization-based perspective on childhood autism treatment]. / Perspective de prise en charge d'enfants atteints de troubles du spectre autistique par psychothérapie inspirée des thérapies basées sur la mentalisation.

Mentalization is a process by which a subject makes sense of both his own mental representations and of those around him. Disturbances in the mentalization process are found in several psychiatric disorders, notably borderline personality disorders for which mentalization-based treatments (MBT) have been developed and evaluated. Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) display a theory of mind impairments, which corresponds to disturbances in the mentalization process. Although no MBT protocol for patients with ASD has been described in the literature, such treatment appears promising to improve theory of mind and functional outcome of these children. In this paper, we propose to discuss the theoretical ground of MBT therapeutic effect in children with ASD without intellectual disabilities and to describe a clinical protocol to test this perspective.

Behavioral versus pharmacological treatments for essential hypertension: a pilot study.

This is the only study so far in which a behavioral treatment is compared with standard pharmacological treatments for essential hypertension. Three groups of five subjects each were compared: 1. pharmacological treatment; 2. relaxation treatment (autogenic training); 3. the combination. The group given antihypertensive medication was significantly more improved (as determined by blood pressure decrease) by the fourth quarter of the treatment as compared with the relaxation treatment or with the combination. This advantage for routine amounts of antihypertensive medications vs. behavioral treatments is consistent with the only other data from a similar comparison that is available [1].