Seeking to improve services for students with autism, UMaine Counseling Center taps special education professor’s expertise

On a recent Friday morning, the staff of the University of Maine Counseling Center gathered in the office common room. Over coffee and pastries, they listened as Sarah Howorth, an associate professor of special education at UMaine, talked about the challenges people with autism and other developmental disabilities face finding and making friends. 

Approximately one in 36 children in the United States are on the autism spectrum, and increasing numbers of students with an autism diagnosis are going to college. In 2019, Howorth worked with UMaine’s Center for Community Inclusion and Disability Studies and the Maine Division of Vocational Rehabilitation to launch a pilot program called Step Up to College, aimed at providing effective supports for students with autism as they transition from high school to college. People on the spectrum often have challenges related to communication and forming relationships, so the Step Up program incorporated elements of the Program for the Education and Enrichment of Relational Skills, or PEERS, a social skills curriculum for children and young adults with autism developed by the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. 

With the counseling center seeing an increase in neurodivergent clients in recent years, its staff invited Howorth to share her expertise in two half-day training sessions.

“They were searching for ‘autism’ and ‘college students,’ and my name kept coming up, so they reached out to me to ask if I’d come talk to them about PEERS and how it can help college students and others who are on the spectrum,” said Howorth, who is certified by the Semel Institute to be a PEERS provider and is director of the PEERS Lab at UMaine.

The PEERS curriculum includes practice sessions on communication and interpersonal skills, such as how to start, maintain and exit conversations. In addition to people with autism, research has shown it to be an effective intervention for people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, anxiety, depression and other social-emotional health conditions. 

“Some interventions for people with autism encourage them to hide or mask their authentic selves,” Howorth said. “But PEERS is about helping people identify what they are authentically interested in, and having them practice social skills around those interests in a safe environment before interacting with others in the so-called ‘real world.’”

The training sessions Howorth led for the counseling center included about a dozen staff members at UMaine and its regional campus, the University of Maine at Machias. They covered a variety of topics from the PEERS curriculum, including finding a source of friends, electronic communication and dating and intimacy.

At one point, Howorth asked the staff to name all of the peer groups they could think of on campus. Examples included student athletes, fraternity and sororities, gaming groups and live action role playing, or LARPing. 

“When we do PEERS groups, we ask participants to identify at least two social groups that they consider themselves to be part of, and then ask: Why are peer groups or crowds important? Where can you find different peer groups? And how can you tell which peer groups people are part of?” Howorth said. “We emphasize that friendships are based on common interests, and then we provide scenarios so they can practice things like starting and exiting conversations based on their interests.”

UMaine Counseling Center Director Angela Fileccia says first-year students on the spectrum in particular face numerous challenges, not just with making friends, but figuring out how to live with other people and how to act in class.  

“In high school, these students often had support from family or teachers that they’re not getting in college. By the time they see us, whether they come here on their own or they’re referred to us by faculty or staff, in addition to all the other problems that they are dealing with, they’re often depressed. So what we want to do is address the underlying issues behind their depression,” Fileccia said.

Some members of the counseling center staff had heard about PEERS before they met with Howorth. Fileccia says one of the main things they were interested in learning more about was the program’s focus on forming and maintaining friendships.

“We know that if a person has one close friend, their risk of suicide, of overdose, of any number of poor mental health outcomes decreases dramatically. So if we can help some of our clients make just one friend, that will ultimately help improve their social and academic outcomes,” she said. 

Although the staff would need to go through the Semel Institute’s official training in order to offer PEERS groups, she says some of them are already applying what they learned from Howorth in individual therapy sessions with students.

“One of our therapists shared that they used part of a PEERS practice module with one of their clients the other day,” Fileccia said. “That’s a technique that we use anyway — having clients practice behaviors during therapy, then asking them to go try it in the real world and report on how it went. So it’s another tool that we can use to help our clients.” 

The counseling center, located in the Cutler Health Center on campus, includes a team of licensed clinical social workers, professional counselors, and doctoral and master’s degree level interns in psychology, social work or professional counseling. All currently enrolled students are eligible for free, confidential, solution-focused therapy related to topics such as stress and anxiety, depression, gender and sexual identity, eating concerns, substance use concerns, sexual assault, stalking, relationship violence and more. The center also offers services to help faculty and staff who have students with mental health needs. More information, including how to contact the center is available at umaine.edu/counseling. 

If you need immediate help, call or text 988 or go to 988lifeline.org.

Contact: Casey Kelly, casey.kelly@maine.edu