Abnormal Sensory Reactivity in the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Clinic: Assessment, Management, and Treatment

Clinical interest in abnormal sensory processing has evolved since the mid-twentieth century from initial work by Anna Aryes,1 a prominent occupational therapist, and Leo Kanner, known to many as the father of autism. Aryes, while observing children with learning disabilities, conceived of a field of sensory integration dysfunction, a disorder related to neurological impairment in “detecting, modulating, discriminating, and responding to sensory information”.1 There is increasing recognition today that differences in sensory processing are transdiagnostic and encountered by a multitude of clinical practitioners, including psychiatrists, neurologists, occupational therapists, audiologists, and pediatricians, among others. It is thus of vital importance for child psychiatrists to recognize those differences, distinguish them from autism and other diagnostic categories, and conceptualize approaches to treatment.