Word: blum
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...root of the problem in most cases is an extreme form of social anxiety or phobia. "It is a fear that can literally make it impossible to speak," says Dr. Elisa Shipon- Blum, a Philadelphia-based clinician who specializes in treating selective mutism. As with most social anxieties, SM is more common in girls and is believed to have a strong genetic component. About 70% of kids with SM have an immediate family member who also struggles with social anxiety...
...that's changing, thanks largely to specialists such as Bergman and Shipon-Blum. Trained as an osteopathic family physician, Shipon-Blum had a pressing personal interest in the condition. Finding almost no good research on the subject, she had to resort to trial and error in order to help her daughter Sophie, now 11, overcome a paralyzing mutism. Today Shipon-Blum runs an SM clinic with a two-year waiting list and travels the U.S. speaking in hotel ballrooms packed with concerned parents, teachers and clinicians. She also founded the nonprofit Selective Mutism Group--Childhood Anxiety Network, which has become...
...Shipon-Blum's treatment approach involves a range of cognitive-behavioral techniques aimed, at least at first, at increasing nonverbal interaction. In her office in Jenkintown, Pa., wedged into a strip mall along with a Dunkin' Donuts and a beauty salon, Shipon-Blum has taped colorful Popsicle sticks together into a pointer, and kids use it to respond to questions by indicating either a YES card or a NO card. The amount of homework Shipon- Blum assigns surprises many parents. When shopping with their parents, for example, kids are encouraged to hand the money to merchants. And in restaurants, children...
...children with SM may be expected to have a playdate with the same peer every week, whether or not the child speaks to the friend. "We have to build them up inside before we even talk about talking. I need to give them back control within themselves," says Shipon-Blum...
...departure from what until quite recently was standard practice in the field. Many doctors either offered parents hopeless-sounding diagnoses, such as autism or mental retardation, or dismissed their concerns as neurotic, telling them that their children would simply grow out of it. That message infuriates specialists like Shipon-Blum, who agrees that children with untreated SM may eventually manage to communicate in social situations but insists that without addressing the precipitating factors behind the mutism, debilitating anxieties are likely to persist into adulthood. "They may develop methods of coping, but are they happy and functioning?" she asks...