Interventions for cases of children and adolescents with selective mutism

Abstract

The aim of this article is to present an integrative literature review with a view to identifying psychotherapeutic, pharmacological treatments or that used alternative communication as an intervention for the cases of children with selective mutism. For this purpose, the bibliographic survey in virtual databases was considered as a method of analysis. Descriptors were selected in the Portuguese and English versions ("selective mutism", "children", "teenager", "treatment", "intervention", "school", "alternative and expanded communication", "selective mutism", "children", “Adolescent”, “treatment”, “intervention”, “augumentative and alternative communication”) and used, alone or combined with each other, through the Boolean operator “and” according to the particularity of each database. As a result, 27 studies were identified, including: full articles, theses, dissertations published in Portuguese and English in the Google Scholar databases, ERIC, PubMed, Scielo, Web of Science, virtual libraries from national public universities and a virtual library of an American university. For the final selection of studies, inclusion parameters were defined, according to the following three items: a) empirical studies showing the effects of interventions, published between the years 2006 to 2017; b) participants up to 18 years of age and diagnosed with selective mutism, according to DSM criteria 4 and 5; c) psychotherapeutic, pharmacological or alternative communication interventions. Publications that did not meet the above criteria were excluded. It was concluded that therapeutic intervention predominantly used is cognitive behavioral, without indicating a specific intervention time.